


Hiking is for Losers

by Wendolynn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Protective Dean, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Worldbuilding, h/c
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-05-30 12:06:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6423325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wendolynn/pseuds/Wendolynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finds an angel on the run while on a camping trip with his brother. Saving him takes some extraordinary effort, even for the Winchesters. AU, H/C</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dean's detector had just started going off when he smelled the angel.

Dean had been hiking most of the day on rough trail with a heavy pack, it was raining, and he was almost at the spot where he'd agreed to meet up with Sam for the night. He was already tired and didn't really feel like dealing with the temperamental way the detectors tended to act anywhere outside of a lab. Which meant pretty much anywhere anybody wanted them to be useful for anything. He really wasn't in the mood to stop and do a grid search for a possible monster that probably wasn't even there.

He dug around in his belt to switch the thing off, figuring that if there was anything to find, Sam's detector would be going off too, and he'd deal with it when they met up. Then the wind shifted, flicking rain into his face, and Dean got a nose full of ozone. It was a smell that was unforgettable. Lightning and fire and pain and desperation and beauty beyond what mortal eyes were probably supposed to comprehend, or some shit like that. That smell meant death and hard choices in terrible places.

Dean stopped in his tracks. He took a long breath, and his eyes almost started to water, it was so strong. The air was thick with it. A crackling, fiery, otherworldly smell.

Angel sign. Close.

Dean lifted his walking stick and held it loosely between both hands, trying not to feel stupid. Any angel he met could tear him to shreds, stick or not. He had a knife in his boot he could get to, but he didn't want to immediately advertise the fact that he was a hunter. If the ozone was this strong, the angel had to be injured, and probably not feeling too friendly. He tilted his head, and listened.

There was nothing, only the sound of the miserable drizzle that had been falling all day. It patted and plinked at the forest around him.

The wind was blowing that terrified ozone smell at him from the east, as far as he could tell. Dean took five steps in that direction, smacking wet leaves and branches aside, and literally almost stepped on the angel.

Worthless goddamn detectors.

Dean was surprised enough that he came close to falling on his ass. It was the only reason the pincer the angel threw at him missed. It hit the tree next to him, roughly even with his throat, a little silvery dart suddenly sticking out of the wood.

Dean dropped into a crouch and had to force himself not to dive for cover. He held up his hands instead, stick and all.

“Whoa!” he said sharply. “Whoa, easy.”

Dean saw the angel wilt slightly when he realized he'd missed his shot. The angel sort of slumped back onto the ground, grimacing. He was half-naked and covered in scratches and blood and far wetter than Dean knew any angel ever liked to be. His wings were spread wide in a way that bothered Dean.

It looked wrong. An angel wouldn't leave his wings out and vulnerable like that if he felt cornered. Dean's heart sank. His eyes raked over the angel's feathers. As dark as they were, Dean would have a tough time seeing any blood, but there wasn't any obvious injury.

Then Dean spotted it, a faint point of blue light coming from the mass of dark feathers, almost like an LED. Before he even had a chance to curse God for being a bastard his eye caught another one, and then another, and another. Once he'd realized how to look right he didn't want to look anymore. The angel was practically a pincushion. No wonder he couldn't fold his wings up. He had to be in agony.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” Dean said quietly. He glanced to his left at the little metallic pincer stuck in the tree. It wasn't hooked into angelic grace, so it wasn't glowing. Harmless, almost. If it had hit Dean it would have hurt him, probably incapacitated him depending on where it hit him, but it wouldn't have killed him. Pincers were made for catching escaped angels. For killing them, most of the time.

When hooked into an angel's grace, they were excruciating and crippling. An angel was forced to stay corporeal-any attempt to go fireball and the spells woven into the pincers would activate, eating holes into the angel's grace until they burned themselves right through to ashes.

Dean had seen it happen. He would rather never see it happen again.

Slowly, so as not to startle, Dean set his walking stick aside. He held his empty hands up with a sheepish smile.

The angel looked briefly confused.

“So,” Dean said, taking a slow step forward, not missing how it made the angel tense, “that wing looks pretty bad, huh?” He crouched down carefully, not too close, and took a second to take his backpack off. The angel watched him with a curious frown.

When Dean unzipped a pouch, however, the angel made an alarmed sound, and tried to scoot away from him.

“Wait!” Dean said quickly, the flashlight already held up in his hand just as a strangled noise escaped from the angel and he froze in place, his wings suddenly kind of...quivering. It was not a pleasant thing to look at. The angel was breathing very hard through his mouth, as if he'd just run somewhere. Dean thought he saw a few more pincers glowing with their evil little lights on the other wing, now that the angle was better. Too damn many. Dean couldn't imagine how he hadn’t passed out from the pain.

Dean held out his empty hand in an appeasing way. “I'm just going to look, okay? Just let me have a look and see how bad.” He wiggled the flashlight in his other hand, and lifted his eyebrows in what he hoped was a charming and non-threatening way.

The angel lifted his head like it was a real effort and fixed his eyes on the flashlight. For a second Dean thought that maybe he would have to repeat himself, that maybe the pain had been too loud for the angel to hear anything else.

“You shouldn't touch me,” the angel said. Dean relaxed. Rational was always nice.

“Probably not,” Dean said. He leaned in closer. Yes, if Dean touched the angel, he was going to smell like him. From the state of this one, Dean was probably going to smell like him for a while. He might even set off detectors. But the bigger problem was other hunters. They would know he'd had contact. And if he didn't have an angel corpse, or a note on his record stating he'd bagged one recently, he was going to get his ass into some serious shit. But they didn’t have time to get into this.

Dean knew, and he didn't give a crap. This wasn't the first angel he'd found.

He flicked on the flashlight. He wouldn't even need it if this angel's feathers weren't so dark. They were like giant crow's wings. Dean had never seen another pair like them.

The angel recoiled. “You don't understand. There are hunters after me now.” He jerked his head toward the forest around them. “Out there, somewhere. You can't risk it.”

Dean made a face, because that was bullshit. The angel continued, his voice softer.

“There is no point in putting yourself in danger. There's nothing you can do.”

His tone of voice made Dean feel every bit as wet and cold and miserable as the weather. Angels didn’t give up. Unless- Without comment, Dean turned the beam of light onto the angel's feathers. He cast it over one wing, and then the other, a multitude of vicious little pincers twinkling back at him like cheerful blue death.

Dean turned away, and cursed.

“You see,” the angel said, and fuck everything if he didn't sound sad for Dean. For _Dean_.

Dean had helped a few angels get over the border into Canada. He'd spent maybe a month's worth of sleepless nights in total sweating over angel wings, digging those pincers out of feathers and grace. Watching angels burn underneath him and trying to keep them sane while they screamed for their brothers and their sisters and the horrible spells and poison in the pincers tried to melt their sanity away like fucking cotton candy in the rain.

Dean had saved some angels, and lost some. But he'd never seen an angel carrying this many pincers before. Not even Anna had been this bad. This was...this was hours worth of work. At least. Dean had lost angels that had a better chance than this one.

He wiped his hand over his mouth, sitting back on his heels. Dean looked away from the angel's wings, and up at his face. His hair was dark and long enough that it was hanging in wet straggles into his eyes. His eyes were huge and clear blue, like the sky on a summer day in Kansas. Break-your-heart-blue, as Bobby would say. He didn't look like a guy that had maybe thirteen hours of life left in him. He just seemed tired and scared.

Fuck it. Dean had to try.

“Okay,” he said, turning back to his pack and digging around in one of the special pockets. “Do you think you could walk, if I helped you? We can't stay here. This place reeks of angel, and if there's other hunters after you this is the last place we want to be.”

He could feel the angel staring at him. “It wouldn't matter-” he began.

Dean cut him off by holding up a small tool that was rather heavy for its size. The sigils carved into the handle caught even the gloomy light in an eye-catching way, the magic within making them want to be seen. The angel's eyes widened, something like hope dawning in his face.

“I've done this before,” Dean said, carefully tucking the extractor away in this jacket pocket. “I can help you, I can pull those things out of you, but I can't do it here. I'm supposed to meet my brother up by the ridge. He's got some supplies I don't have, and we'll need to set up somewhere less...” he made a face, “flammable.”

The angel was looking at him as if Dean was some new species of something he'd never seen before. “Who are you?” he asked.

Dean smiled. “I'm Dean Winchester.”

This didn't seem to be a sufficient answer.

Dean waited until the angel quit frowning to himself like the family dog had just started speaking Spanish and he wasn't sure if he needed to re-evaluate his opinion on the world or just his opinion of his own sanity. When the angel finally looked at him, Dean gave him an encouraging expression and lifted his eyebrows.

The angel blinked at him.

“You got a name?” Dean asked, giving up on subtlety. For a second he was expecting the angel to say 'yes' and nothing else.

“Castiel,” he said.

Something about the name was familiar. Castiel's face wasn't familiar...but Dean would swear he'd heard that name before somewhere. Weird.

“Well, Castiel,” Dean said, “today, you can call me Obi-Wan Kenobi, because I'm your only hope. So can you walk if I help, or am I carrying you?”

Slowly, Castiel held out a hand. Dean pulled him up, but his wings shifted as he moved and Dean saw all the color drain out of his face. Dean caught him against his shoulder before Castiel could pass out face first into the mud.

Dean took a breath, shifted his feet and stood up underneath him, lifting Castiel as went. He'd effectively thrown Castiel over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Dean was lucky he wasn't a bigger guy.

“Okay, then,” Dean said to Castiel's calves, getting a better grip on them. It wasn't that far to Sam. Dean could do this, no problem. He started walking.

Castiel jerked awake when Dean got too close to some brush. A branch snagged on one of Castiel's wings, and he wrenched himself to consciousness at Dean's back with a strangled scream.

“Dammit,” Dean said, struggling not to drop him as he tensed and flailed with fear and pain. “Sorry, sorry! Take it easy. It's Dean Winchester. You're all right, I'm taking you to my brother. Fuck.”

Castiel relaxed as Dean spoke. “Dean,” he repeated, his voice strained. His hands still felt like they were trying to claw through Dean's shirt.

Dean could feel him shaking.“Yeah. Just let me take care of this.”

He took a minute to really look at Castiel's feathers and see how they were caught. Then Dean eased the wing away from the offending branch really fucking carefully. Castiel still made a noise low in his throat that had Dean muttering apologies under his breath.

“It’s not far,” Dean promised, because it wasn't, and because Castiel had to be uncomfortable. “No offense, but I don't think you can walk it.”

“No,” Castiel said faintly.

Dean started moving again. He felt Castiel shudder in his arms at the inevitable jostling, but he made no further sound. Dean clenched his jaw and kept walking. A moment later, he felt Castiel's hands fumbling at his belt, fingers curling around thick leather. As if by anchoring himself to something physical he could push the pain away a little.

It was an impulse Dean recognized, and he felt a pang of sympathy. Dean was intimately familiar with just what real pain could do to somebody. It wasn't only because of his hobby of pulling angels from death's door. He knew the small things a person would do to keep their sanity when there wasn't any hope of relief, because he'd been there himself.

Dean risked his life on a semi-regular basis to avoid hunting angels. Demons, however, didn't get the same consideration. Not after what they'd done to him.

Dean didn't go right to the meet-up point. If there were hunters after Castiel, and they found him, Dean was pretty much screwed. He reeked of angel, and he didn't have any good excuse for why he wouldn't shoot a runaway on sight. Much less carry the guy around. Sam still had some wiggle room as long as he kept his distance, and Dean didn't want to put him in any more danger than he had to.

Besides, Dean needed to find a sandy spot, or someplace with decent clay and not too much vegetation around. He didn't want to have to move Castiel multiple times, and once he got started pulling those pincers out and the spells flared up Castiel was going to be having a rough time not going fireball. He'd be putting out a shit ton of heat, and Dean wasn't exactly keen on starting a forest fire. At least the rain was good for something.

Dean circled around a little and picked his campsite carefully. It wasn't as concealed as he would like, but given how thick the rest of the area was with shrubs and tinder everywhere, Dean figured he was stuck with it. He was getting concerned that if he tried to keep looking his shoulder was going to give out. Unfortunately, when angels started popping out of their human forms they also put out a lot of light. It made the stealth part of extraction kind of fucking difficult.

Once Dean accepted the clearing he'd found was as good a spot as he was probably going to get, he gave Castiel's leg a pat.

“Looks like we're here,” he said, making a valiant effort to not sound winded. Castiel might not be a big guy, but he wasn't small either.

Castiel said nothing. Dean tried to turn his head, but he couldn't get a look at him. He thought he could still feel Castiel's fingers holding onto his belt, though.

“Castiel?” Dean prodded. Castiel didn't so much as twitch and his breathing didn't change either.

“Great,” Dean sighed.

With some effort, he managed to crouch down, resting Castiel's legs on the ground. Dean had to actually put one hand on Castiel's hipbones and push a little, feeling a tug at his waist as Castiel let go of the death grip he had on Dean's belt. Castiel slid off him and crumpled almost immediately, eyes slitted open but looking completely out of it. Dean had to catch his arm to keep him from toppling over onto his own wing and driving those pincers in deeper.

Castiel blinked, and tried to focus on Dean's face. He had the kind of glazed look in his eyes of someone hanging on to consciousness by their fingernails.

“Here?” he asked Dean, his voice faint. He glanced around as if just noticing his surroundings.

“Best I can do at the moment,” Dean said, watching him carefully.

Castiel nodded too fast and closed his eyes. Dean reached out and patted him on the cheek, concerned.

“Hey.”

Castiel's eyes opened wide. He made some effort to prop himself up, putting an arm out and leaning heavily on it.

“Yes.” Castiel said. He looked like he was having a hard time concentrating past whatever he was feeling. “Yes, we can...proceed.”

Dean frowned. If Castiel was already starting to lose touch with reality, they were in trouble.

Dean leaned in close to him, concerned. “Look, I need to leave you here for a minute. I have to go find my brother. He's got some stuff I need, remember? Are you going to be all right by yourself?”

Castiel stared at him, and Dean had a creepy feeling that he was actually looking at him for the first time. “You left your backpack,” he said. His voice sounded stronger.

“Yeah, well, hiking is for losers,” Dean said. He smiled at Castiel’s confused expression. “You're kind of heavy, dude. I got the extractor and my cell, but that's all I brought. So I gotta go stock up, cause I don't want to end up in the hospital tomorrow.”

When Dean started working, Castiel was going to burn hot as a goddamn oven. Dean usually had gear to deal with it- insulated mitts and pads at the minimum-but this hadn't been a hunting trip, and Dean didn't have anything like that on him. Sam had the cooking supplies, though, and he was always the finicky one. Dean was hoping his brother had something he could use, because otherwise Dean was probably going to do a stint in the burn ward.

Castiel's face tightened. “Apologies,” he said. “I can wait.”

Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “Awesome.” He stood up with every intention of heading off double time. However, he made the mistake of glancing down first.

Castiel was silent and stoic, sitting half naked in the mud. He was tough, Dean could see that already. Dean had worked on angels that he'd had to gag by this point, just so nobody would hear them and find them. But there was something about the way Castiel was watching Dean, like he never expected to see him again, that was unexpectedly heartbreaking all on its own.

Dean took his coat off, knelt down, and tucked it gently around Castiel's bare shoulders. He had to basically drape it across the guy's chest, because he didn't want to tweak his wings, but from the way Castiel's eyes got big and round, it looked like the sentiment had gotten through, even if the execution was kind of awkward.

“I'll be right back.” Dean said firmly, looking him right in the eyes.

Castiel looked down at the coat, then back up. “Yes,” he said, his expression softening. Like he believed Dean this time.

Dean nodded, and pretty much ran away. He didn't want to like the guy too much. He remembered too clearly the last angel who he'd tried to help and had died in the worst way imaginable. Dean couldn't afford to let himself care like that anymore. Not if he wanted to keep doing this.

Dean was a expecting it to be a little bit of a bitch to find Sam, given that Dean’s cellphone wasn’t really cooperating and Dean had left his damn locator beacon in his damn backpack, because he was an idiot. Bobby had the mother box to reach them if they got lost or in trouble somewhere cell phones weren’t reliable, but even if Dean still had his locator, Bobby was miles away. Dean’s beacon would have lit up when he got near Sam's locator; He’d found Sam that way before. Without it, everything was a little harder.

Dean was prepared to spend at least half an hour dicking around trying to spot him. Luckily, Sam had somehow managed to get a fire going, so Dean didn’t have to walk way the fuck back to where he’d dropped his pack just so he could find someone who was less than a mile from him. Dean could have kissed him for being so diligent. If you were hoping for somebody to find your camp, you lit a fire, beacons or not. The rain had let up, but Dean had been walking for long enough in just his flannel shirt that he was almost frozen through. If Bobby were there he would have kicked his ass for being so careless in the woods.

Sam got to his feet when he saw Dean approach, but the smile slid off his face once he got a good look. “Dude, where's all your stuff? Where's your coat?” He stepped toward Dean, and Dean put both hands up, backing off a little.

“Better not, Sam,” he said. “I kind of picked up a stray on my way here, and he's got hunters after his ass.”

Sam's mouth dropped open. “Seriously? An angel?”

Dean shrugged.

Sam made a frustrated gesture. “Dean, we don't have any of our equipment. There's no way.”

Dean's heart sank a little. “There's nothing we could make do with? What about the cooking supplies?”

Sam gaped at him for a minute. He gestured helplessly at the air, as if Dean was completely impossible. Then he turned and stepped over toward the fire. There was a clanking sound while he dug around through some of his fancy cooking crap. Then Sam tossed him something, looking grim. Dean caught it on reflex.

It was a single square silicone oven pad. Dean looked at it for a second as if it merited examination. “Okay,” he said, trying for confidence.

“Dean,” Sam protested, disbelieving.

Dean spread his arms wide. “What else can we do?” he snapped. “You want me to just leave him?”

“No!” Sam sputtered.

“Then what?” Dean asked, annoyed.

“Look,” Sam said carefully, holding his hands out, “I just...I've noticed, that ever since we lost that redhead, Anna?”

Dean clenched his fists, flashing suddenly on the face of the last angel they hadn't been able to save. She'd been almost as bad off as Castiel, and she'd screamed for hours until she'd died...

“You've been taking a lot more risks. I know you liked her, but you can't let this-” Sam began.

“We can't get attached,” Dean said with a brittle smile. “I know. We save them, we move them along. What's your point, Sam?”

“I want you to be more careful, Dean,” Sam urged. “I met Gordon on the trail, about two days ago. Now if you say this angel has hunters after him-”

“Gordon,” Dean said, stiffening. “Did he say what he was hunting? Or where he was going?”

Sam shook his head. “No. But you know if there was an angel loose in these woods he'd be after it.”

Dean wiped at his mouth. “Shit.”

Sam widened his eyes. “Yeah. You reek, dude. He'll know what's up in five seconds as soon as he sees you.”

Dean looked at the ground for a moment. “Okay. This is what we need to do. I left my pack behind when I found Castiel, and it's got my locator on it. I need you to go and get it before Gordon trips over it and figures out what we're doing. I'll start working while you're gone.”

“Yeah, okay.” Sam frowned. “But we should call Bobby to come and get us out of here. We should do this somewhere safer.”

Dean shook his head. “I can't get any reception out here, and anyway, he can't wait.”

“That bad?” Sam looked grim.

“Worst I've ever seen.”

Sam cursed quietly. Then,

“His name is Castiel?” His voice was thoughtful. Dean nodded. Sam scratched at his face, looking oddly troubled. “That sounds familiar. We don't know him or anything, right?”

Dean opened his mouth to tell him 'no', because that was the right answer. Dean had never seen those black wings before, and he would have remembered a face like that. He meant to say 'no' even though the name had bothered him when he'd heard it, and now that Sam seemed to know the name too he couldn't help but think about it again...

Then he remembered. The memory came to him fully formed. Anna had screamed for her brothers, she had begged for them to come and save her, she'd howled their names over and over until her voice broke and her wings crackled and she had burned and died in his arms.

_Castiel, Castiel, Castiel, please..._

Sam was saying something, but Dean had missed the first part of it. He was focused too hard on not throwing up.

“This is too dangerous,” Sam continued, “Look, I got a couple of bars on my phone when I was up there,” He pointed at a slightly higher elevation in the opposite direction from where Dean had walked from. “I should try and call Bobby.”

Dean was quiet for probably too long, and Sam started to look concerned. Dean couldn't think. He could still hear Anna screaming. And Castiel was waiting for Dean right now, Anna's brother with the break-your-heart blue eyes and more pincers in him than Dean had ever seen an angel survive.

“Knock yourself out,” Dean said finally, and was pretty proud of himself when his voice sounded normal. “Just get my pack first.”

Sam gave him a sour expression.

When Dean arrived back at the clearing where he'd left Castiel, he brought a few supplies with him. Castiel was curled up in a miserable little ball, resting his head on his knees. His wings were splayed out behind him awkwardly, trailing in the mud. He raised his head when Dean approached, and the stupidly grateful look Castiel gave him made Dean's chest tighten up.

“Hey,” Dean said, so Castiel would stop looking at him like that. “I told you I'd be back.”

“You did,” Castiel said. His voice sounded thick and full of black thoughts. It occurred to Dean how scary it must have been to be alone and dying here, knowing that somewhere out in the woods was a hunter who wanted to finish you off.

Dean set his stuff down, kneeling so he could be close. “Well, I'm not leaving again,” he said.

Castiel let out a huff of breath that did pretty good as a stand-in for a self-effacing little laugh. “I should not expect this from you. The hunter that did this to me will be-”

“What did he look like?” Dean asked sharply.

Castiel frowned at him. “I...he...had a dark complexion. He was...very angry in his soul. He was better at hunting angels than any human I've encountered yet.”

Dean sighed, nodding. “Gordon. Fuck.”

Castiel stiffened. “You know him?”

Dean shook his head. “Kind of. Enough to know we're in trouble. My brother's going to try and get us a ride out of here with my uncle Bobby, if he can get a signal on his cell phone. We just gotta make sure we get you taken care of in the meantime.” He picked up the large metal coffee pot he'd brought.

“I've heard rumors of people who survived, who had pincers removed with extractors, but no one ever speaks about...” Castiel paused. He pressed his lips together briefly, his eyebrows going up. It was a rather helpless expression.“I don't know what to do,” he said bluntly.

Dean nodded, not without sympathy, and handed him a tin cup. “Drink this.”

Castiel took a sip and startled, looking up at Dean with a question on his face.

“Good, huh?” Dean prompted.

“It's holy water,” Castiel replied, drinking it off with a pleasantly surprised expression.

“It'll help,” Dean said. “You'll be drinking a lot of it. I brought extra.” He tapped the coffee pot with a finger. It made a bonging, fluid-filled sound.

Castiel handed the cup back, and Dean touched the hem of his coat, still tucked around Castiel's shoulders. “I'm going to need to take this back,” he said. “You'll burn through it if I don't. And you're going to have to lay flat.”

Castiel glanced briefly down at the mud, sighed, and relinquished Dean's coat, reclining slowly. It was an awkward, painful process, with a lot of shuffling of feathers. Dean climbed to his feet and offered him a hand for leverage. Castiel reached past his hand and grasped him by the wrist, getting Dean into a good firm grip. Dean braced himself and Castiel pulled on him hard, sweeping his wings out wide with a choked-off sound of pain and then using Dean's arm to lower himself down flat. Castiel sagged into himself when it was done, shutting his eyes and taking big breaths.

Dean hovered over him, feeling awkward. After a moment he leaned down and rubbed at Castiel's shoulder, attempting to comfort him, muttering useless encouragements.

Once it looked like Castiel had more of a handle on himself again, Dean fished the extractor out of his jacket pocket, and pulled his knife out of his boot. He fished a small bowl and a cloth from the bag he'd brought. Then, because it was starting to get dark now and he needed to see what he was doing, Dean dragged over the little camping lantern and switched it on.

When he looked up, Castiel was watching him, the lantern light glinting in his eyes.

“You're a hunter,” he said. His voice was perfectly flat.

Dean looked down at the knife he'd pulled out, at the sigils swirling across the hilt and the blade. He could kill an angel with that knife. Theoretically. It worked just fine on demons and monsters too.

He looked back up at Castiel. He hadn't moved, but there was tension in his body that hadn't been there before.

“I don't hunt angels,” Dean said. “I hunt things that kill people for fun. If you've got a problem with that, you can take it up with me after I get your ass safe out of the country.”

Castiel stared at him for a long moment. Dean waited for him. Just as Dean started to get a little worried, Castiel nodded.

“What are you going to do?” Castiel asked, licking his lips. It was a nervous gesture. Dean didn't think Castiel had been nervous before he'd seen the knife.

Dean eyed him for a minute. He didn't usually go over the process with the angels he worked on. First of all, it usually scared the crap out of them, and second, it made them tense up waiting for the next step. If they didn't know, they couldn't anticipate him. Dean usually just told them that he would get the little metal bastards out, and that it would suck more than they could possibly imagine.

Of course, most angels didn't have more than one or two pincers in them total.

He thought about Anna for a moment, about how she'd had so many in her, and how much of a clusterfuck that had become. The thought made him slightly queasy, like he'd swallowed something bad. Maybe it would have been different if he'd prepared her better.

Dean sat back and rested his elbows on his knees. “I have to get a little mojo going beforehand. I'll need your blood, and mine. It goes in the bowl, I'll mix it, say some fancy words. Then I'm going to paint some sigils on you, and one on me.” Dean pointed at his own chest. He tilted his head. “After that, it's all in the tools. I'll hook this,” he held up the extractor, “into the pincer, and work it out. It's not going to want to let go of you. It's going to make you want to flame out more than just about anything, but you can't.”

“If I do I'll die,” Castiel said. “I know that much.”

“Right. Well, the spells in these little bastards can be tricky. I'll try not to trip anything, but if I do, you could start to hallucinate...things could get wild. But no matter what, you can't slip your meatsuit, man.”

Castiel gave him a frown, as if to say 'I know this'.

Dean pointed at a patch of feathers close to Castiel's body “I'll start here, and move out. It'll get harder for you to hold on the longer it takes, so I need to do the ones closest in first.” He didn't say anything else and hoped Castiel wouldn't ask.

“Why?” Castiel said, because Dean just couldn't catch a break.

Dean sighed and dropped his head for a second. He picked up the knife and didn't look at Castiel when he did it. “Because if you start to let go, and I've gotten enough of them out, I can cut the rest of your wing off.”


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel hissed in a breath. He looked horrified.

Dean looked back down at his hands. He felt weirdly like he should apologize.

“If you don't want my help that's fine,” he said. “Not every angel I've met did. You're...really bad. This is going to suck really bad. But I'd like to give it a shot.” He stopped again, feeling dumb.

“If I can live through this, I want to,” Castiel said slowly, after a nerve-wracking pause. “You said you helped others...Canada, then?”

Dean nodded. “It's not great, but it’s better than here. There's an angel there, on the other side. Gabriel. A few years ago he was right where you're sitting. Now he helps us.”

For a moment, Castiel almost looked wistful. “I would like that. To meet your friend Gabriel in Canada.”

Dean tensed. He gave Castiel a sharp look. “Hey,” he said. “You will.” His voice was insistent. Castiel sounded way too much like he didn't believe he had a shot in hell of ever seeing Canada.

Castiel gave him a resigned expression. It pissed Dean off.

“Look,” he said, leaning in, “you have got to work with me, buddy.” He met Castiel's eyes, very close now. “I can do this. But not if you don't believe it can be done. I need your help here.”

Castiel's eyes widened a little, fixed on Dean with an intensity that probably should have bothered him. Dean didn't know what Castiel was looking for in his face. Maybe he was doing that soul-reading thing they could do. All that Dean cared about was that after a long moment of staring at him like he was something completely impossible, Castiel nodded.

Dean took a breath. “Okay then. Let's get started.” He made the cut in his own arm first, let the blood drip into the bowl. He noticed Cas giving the knife a leery expression. Dean flipped it in his hand, grabbing onto the naked blade and offering Castiel the handle.

Castiel frowned at him. Dean made a 'take-it' gesture. Castiel looked at the cut on Dean's arm, and after a moment of hesitation, made a matching one on his own. Dean reached out with the bowl and caught the thin stream of blood that resulted.

Nonchalantly, Castiel planted the hunter's knife into the earth just about as far from Dean as he could put it without actually getting up. Dean would have to reach over Castiel's body to grab it. Castiel eyed him, looking for a reaction.

Dean let out a breath of amusement, and said nothing about it.

He swirled the blood in the bowl, muttering the right words. He added a couple of drops of holy water, and started the paint job. Castiel had to go first, and Dean used his fingers to mark him, setting up the second half of the spell, making it easier on himself. A symbol on his chest, where his grace would burn the hottest, and small streaks down the primary arch of each wing, where most of Dean's work would actually be done. Then Dean shucked his shirts, shivering in the cold, and marked up his own chest. The symbols were similar; they would serve to link the two of them together as Dean worked.

Dean lit a match, threw it in the bowl, and coughed at the incongruously large puff of smoke that resulted. He felt the symbol on his chest tingle and constrict slightly. It was a familiar sensation, and Dean adjusted his shoulders, relaxing in the knowledge that at least this part of the job had gone off without a hitch. Castiel reacted a little differently. His wet feathers puffed out a little, and he made a thin sound of pain at the movement, stiffening.

“Easy,” Dean soothed, setting the bowl aside. “That was the simple part.”

Castiel looked up at him, his eyes glassy. “I can feel...” he blinked, focusing a little better. “You're close to me, now. We're tethered.”

“It helps me get them out without setting them off. And it's going to remind you to stay in your skin,” Dean said firmly. He brought the lantern over closer, and picked up the extractor. It fit into his hand like an old friend.

Cas' expression was a little bit too dazed for Dean's liking. “You've done this many times. I can feel it now, how well you know your routine. Confidence. It's comforting...”

Dean swallowed hard. Not every angel went all Counselor Troi on him once he'd put the sigils on them. Dean wasn't sure if some of them were more sensitive than others or if some of them just had more tact. He only knew that the ones who did tended to be the ones that bent his 'help them, move them along' policy all to hell. Gabriel had seen and babbled about some emotional crap in Dean's head that Dean could have lived his whole life without getting into. He didn't even want to touch what Gabriel had said about his brother. And now the shifty little dude couldn't go a week without texting Sam about something.

So Dean figured he could be excused for looking at Cas with a mild feeling of horror at what might be about to come out of his mouth.

What happened was worse than airing emotional dirty laundry. Castiel's eyes slid away, losing focus entirely, and Dean saw one of the pincers start to light up.

“Hey, hey!” Dean snapped, reaching over and grabbing his chin. “Stay with me.”

Cas peered at him blearily.

Dean reached out and put his hand on the seal over Castiel's chest. To Dean's relief, there was no unusual heat there, no sign of grace starting to leak through.

Yet.

Castiel jerked at his touch, his eyes going wide. Dean felt a tingle of power under his skin, a sign that the sigil was doing its work. Dean was the anchor, pulling Castiel away from dangerous waters.

“All right?” Dean demanded.

Castiel looked at him lucidly, looking shaken. “I'm here,” he said. Which wasn't really an answer, but close enough.

“Brace yourself,” Dean said, reaching over and fitting the extractor around the brightest pincer he could see. There wasn't any more time to screw around.

He spread his fingers out over Castiel's chest, trying to soothe as he leaned down to get a better look at what he was doing. He tightened the extractor in, wiggling it a little. He felt it slip slightly and froze. Castiel's chest jumped underneath his hand, his whole body stiffening in pain.

The skin under his fingers warmed, just slightly.

Dean let out a breath, eased back slightly, and then put on a little more pressure. The fancy spellwork on the extractor handle started to glow a little.

“That's right,” Dean muttered. He pushed it down a bit, and was rewarded by a slightly angry buzzing sound, and a flare of light.

Castiel hissed out a breath, thunking his head back forcefully against the ground. He gasped for a few moments, a sick, strangled noise forcing its way out of the back of his throat, but he made no other noise.

Dean was impressed. They were usually screaming by now.

He pulled his hand off Castiel's chest. Dean poured him a cup of holy water while still balancing the extractor carefully with the other hand, with the ease of someone who had done it many times before. When he handed it to Castiel, it was pretty obvious Castiel's hands were shaking. Still, Castiel managed to lift his head and gulp it down easily enough.

“Okay,” Dean said then. “Hard part.” He replaced his hand on Castiel's chest. Warmer than it had been. A little feverish, maybe. Nothing to worry about yet.

Dean started pulling.

At first, the pincer actually started to work its way further in, like a porcupine quill. But then the spells on Dean's extractor flared bright and reliable and Castiel jerked on the ground like he'd been shot.

He didn't scream. The light got brighter and brighter, and Castiel finally made a low, desperate, kicked sound...and then Dean's extractor was humming warm in his hand, like a happy dog, and the pincer lay dark and innocent-looking on the ground.

Dean had a cloth ready, and set it aside, just breathing as he listened to Castiel make quiet pain sounds. The only other thing he could hear was the dripping from the trees all around them, still sopping wet from a full day of rain. It wasn't nearly enough to distract him. He wiped some sweat from his face and shivered a little, worked up but still cold.

Dean pushed himself up so he could get a better look, and then figured the hell with it and went ahead and straddled Castiel so he could see the pincers on both wings without moving his hand from Castiel's chest. Castiel went very still underneath him, and when Dean was finished picking his next target and looked down, he realized with some weary amusement that Castiel was doing his best to try and actually become one with the ground. Pushing himself about as far away from Dean as he could get without really moving, as if Dean was something that might bite him unexpectedly.

“Nothing to freak over,” Dean said, dismounting on the opposite side from where he'd started. “I gotta get them as they go bad.”

Castiel wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the hunter's knife, now within easy reach.

“For real?” Dean said. “You think I'm going to go through all this trouble just to kill you? Can't you tell?” The sigil on his chest was still tingling, so it was still working. Castiel should be able to figure out that he wasn't lying at the very least.

Castiel tore his eyes away from the knife and looked him in the eye. Castiel looked awful. Like he was just barely holding himself together. And worse, he looked afraid. Suddenly, Dean felt really shitty.

Dean reached over and pulled the knife out of the ground. It was probably significant or something that Castiel didn't flinch this time.

“If I can't...” Dean stopped. He hefted the knife in his hand, giving Castiel a significant look. “I might need this.” _To cut your fucking wing off._

He saw Castiel's jaw clench, his lips pressing together so tightly they were just a thin white line. Castiel shook his head.

Dean slumped a little. “All or nothing, huh?”

Castiel's expression was suddenly fierce. “I have been mutilated. No more,” he said.

Dean nodded slowly. “Okay, Cas,” he said softly. Then he turned and chucked the knife as far away from himself as he could throw it.

When he turned around he ignored the stunned, what-is-this-impossible-thing-before-me expression on Castiel's face. Apparently that was just how Cas liked to look at him.

He reached over Castiel's chest and grabbed the coffee pot full of holy water. “You good to go again?”

The next three came out like the first one had. Textbook. If there had been a textbook. Dean supposed if there ever was one his brother would probably be the guy to write it and it would be incredibly dull and have a lot of footnotes that nobody ever read.

The only thing that changed was that Castiel's chest kept getting hotter under Dean's fingers, and Castiel started to moan under his breath as Dean worked. Dean hated the sound of it because he could track the level of Castiel's pain by the pitch and tone of that low moaning, and Dean had a horrible suspicion that he was going have to listen to it slowly rise up into screaming. The only question was how long it would take. Dean didn't know why this was worse than just hearing the guy crack and start howling.

Maybe it reminded Dean too much of the way he'd broken himself. A slow step at a time until he'd been screaming himself bloody with it.

So Dean stopped, and gave him a break. He shouldn't have stopped, he didn't have time to stop, but he did it anyway. Maybe Sam was right and the job was finally getting to him.

Cas laid there, panting and shaking for a while, that horrible moaning setting Dean's teeth on edge. Castiel was soaked in sweat, his face flushed, his dark hair sticking to his forehead.

So Dean did something else stupid. He filled the cup with holy water, and poured it over Castiel's forehead, careful to avoid getting it in his eyes, letting it soak into his hair. Castiel breathed in sharply, falling silent.

Dean refilled the cup and repeated the process. Castiel relaxed back onto the ground with a faint sound of relief.

“Okay?” Dean said softly, and cut himself off when he heard his own voice. He had a job to do, he wasn't half done yet, and he needed to get a grip on himself. He moved to start in on the next one and stopped, startled, at Castiel's hand on his arm.

Dean stared at him. As a rule, Angels weren't touchy. Given how most people treated them, Dean suspected it was a survival instinct. If Castiel had enough desperate strength to weaken his seals enough to run, he must have been bound to a real asshole. It was kind of badass that it hadn't fucked with him like that.

Castiel moved his hand away quickly, and gave Dean a pleading look. “The other angels. How did they manage it?”

Something twisted in Dean's chest. “Hey,” he said, his voice going dark and serious, “you're doing damn good. Every other angel I've had has been wailing and screaming for their family to save them by now. So no crazy talk, all right?”

Dean realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he'd said something wrong. Castiel looked like he'd been slapped.

“What?” Dean asked.

“My brothers and sisters are gone,” Castiel said.

Anna, Dean thought, trying not to wince. “Okay,” he said. “That sucks, but I don't get how-”

“When we call to them, they can help us,” Castiel said, as if Dean were stupid.

Dean blinked at him.

“What?”

Castiel frowned. “All the angels you've helped, and you never asked?”

Dean opened his mouth but didn't say anything right away. He settled on: “Ah. No?”

Castiel looked more worried now than he had before Dean had opened his big mouth and tried to make him feel better. Dean thought, briefly, about how Anna had screamed and wondered if Cas had heard, if he had tried to do something for her. If he'd known when she died.

“Look,” Dean said, trying again. “You're doing really well. It's gonna be all right, okay?” It was a stupid promise to make. Dean never made that promise. And fuck everything if he didn't mean it when he said it, because Castiel picked up on the feeling and relaxed a little.

_Stupid sigils..._

It was the next pincer, of course, that almost completely screwed them. No matter what he did, Dean couldn't get a good grip on it. He hunched over it, cursing under his breath as the extractor slipped, setting off another burst of light as it forced the pincer deeper into Castiel's grace. Castiel's moan choked off, and then, quietly...

“Anna.”

Dean was going to lose his mind. He was going to go Shutter Island way off in the woods somewhere with a blue-eyed angel whose sister Dean had already killed.

The fucking extractor missed again and Castiel stiffened. “Anna, please...”

If that wasn't desperation, Dean had never heard it. Dean knew exactly how he felt. He remembered the exact moment when those demons were having their fun with him and Dean had finally started to beg.

The extractor slipped again, and Dean stopped and swore because this time it had only slipped because his hand was shaking.

“I'm sorry,” Dean hissed, spreading his fingers out, trying to cover as much of Castiel's chest as he could with his hand. He could feel the sigil reacting. “I'm so fucking sorry, Cas...”

“Dean,” Castiel said, surprising Dean. He felt something. A tug, maybe. The sigil on his chest was suddenly very warm.

“Yeah,” Dean said, his voice rough. “Yeah, I'm here.” He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and tried again. He could have keeled over when the extractor finally rewarded him by lighting up. That buzzing noise of the pincer reacting was like music to Dean's ears.

Castiel's grace flared, the pincer digging in a little more. It was normal-but it had already dug in way too far for Dean to be comfortable, and the flash of light was big enough that Dean was scared for a second that it wasn't going to stop.

Castiel let out a hoarse shout of pain and then Dean jerked his hand off Castiel's chest with a yelp, the skin suddenly scalding hot.

“Shit.” Dean turned and fumbled for the silicone oven pad, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw the casing on the pincer crack. It split neatly along one of its deadly swirling sigils, and when Dean snapped his head up in horror, he saw light start to rise up underneath the skin of Castiel's chest.

_No-_

Dean grabbed the oven pad and slammed his hand down on Castiel's chest, putting all his weight behind it.

“Don't you dare,” Dean snarled. Castiel had a thousand-yard stare on, his eyes glassy and vacant. He gave no sign that he'd even heard Dean, but Dean felt the sigil on his chest start to pull hard. The heat coming off Castiel felt like Dean had just shoved his face in an open oven. “Castiel!” Dean shouted. “You stay with me, dammit.”

In desperation, Dean reached over, grabbed the coffee pot, and splashed at least half of it right into Castiel's face. He gasped and sputtered, but more importantly, his eyes focused again. He was actually looking at Dean and not off into space.

“You don't get to give up,” Dean said. “We had a deal. You're going to Canada.”

Castiel made a sick sound in the back of his throat. “Please,” he managed. He could have been talking to Anna again, but he wasn't. Castiel was looking right at Dean when he said it, his eyes huge and red-rimmed and making Dean want to agree to just about anything, if it had a chance in hell of wiping that look off his face. Dean could feel the sigil almost like a second heartbeat under his skin.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Yeah, whatever.” And Dean felt...something...yank him so hard from the inside it felt like someone had tried to pull an organ out through his ribcage.

He felt his vision start to tunnel in and took a couple of big breaths, blinking hard, but he must have passed out for a second, because the next thing he knew he was face down on warm skin. It was too warm, actually, and his cheek was sticking to it.

The second that thought penetrated, Dean was scrambling back, his hand scrubbing at his face, wide-eyed with panic. He'd fallen right on top of Castiel, and last he'd checked, Castiel had been running hot enough to melt Dean's face off.

His cheek was sweaty, but unburned. Cas was nearly out cold underneath him. Dean reached out to touch him; It looked like he'd cooled off, somehow, and that just didn't happen. That was when his brain or his nerves woke up and decided to join the party, and a white-hot crack of pain shot up his left arm.

Dean looked down and realized that Castiel had grabbed him. He had a tight grip on Dean's upper arm, and it felt like he was burning his way through it. Dean grabbed his wrist, twisting and wrenching it off. Castiel's hand came away with some of Dean's skin on it.

Dean turned his head, and threw up. He missed Castiel's feathers, but honestly, that was pure luck.

Dean sat there a minute, hunched over and breathing hard. This was just exhausting. He lifted a hand and gripped his throbbing arm just above the elbow, not wanting to actually touch the flayed part. He squeezed his arm in his hand. It didn't help it to stop hurting. It was kind of comforting anyway. Dean almost faceplanted again, right into Castiel's armpit. Instead, Dean kind of half propped himself up, breathing raggedly into Castiel's shoulder. But Dean could feel Castiel underneath him, sweaty and human-shaped and alive, so it was worth it. Whatever 'it' was. Dean reached out with one hand and felt his way blindly across Castiel's chest, his touch admittedly pretty cautious. It didn't need to be, though. Castiel was still impossibly cool to the touch.

Castiel made some sound, some kind of attempt at speaking.

“What?” Dean managed, after a moment. His tongue felt very thick in his mouth. Then, “What?”

Castiel made a slow, slurring 's' noise. It gradually refined itself after a little bit of effort. “Sorry.”

Dean laughed at him. Admittedly, he had kind of a bleak sense of humor. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “'Sorry'. You are weird, you know that?”

Castiel looked up at him with an expression of such utter exhaustion that he couldn't have communicated 'I don't give a fuck' more clearly if he'd actually flipped Dean off.

Dean thought he should probably be more upset about the handprint burned into his arm, but he felt punchy and strange and getting angry sounded like a lot of work. He poured Castiel a cup of holy water, shaking his head to clear it. He felt bad when he realized Cas couldn't lift his head up to drink. Dean leaned over and slid his hand around to cup the back of Castiel's neck. He eased Cas up a little and helped him. Dean realized then just how worn out he was. His hand was shaking the cup a little, and he had to rest Cas' head back down on the ground quickly so Dean wouldn't drop him.

Cas swallowed, so he at least got a mouthful. His lips and his chin were wet where Dean had spilled.

Dean was going to help him out with that in a minute. Clean his face up. Dean rested his head on Castiel's chest for a second, and shut his eyes. Castiel's skin was pleasantly cool to the touch, and Dean smiled. He could sort of feel the sigil humming against his cheek. There was a weird counterpoint throbbing along the pain in his arm.

“Gotta...” Dean's mouth felt like it was full of cotton, “get the next one. In a minute.”

Castiel made a small sound, halfway between weariness and hysteria.

“Gonna do it, Cas,” Dean muttered into Castiel's skin. “You and me, okay? We'll knock it out.”

There was silence, and Dean tried not to think about how close he had come to promising again, saying something stupid and impossible like 'I will get you through this I swear', because Dean didn't do that, not ever, he wasn't that guy. Except for some insane reason Dean had to almost bite the words back, and he had no idea what that even meant, except maybe that he had absolutely no chance of staying detached now and so Castiel had better fucking survive or Dean was going to really lose it this time.

Castiel was going to live. It was going to be different this time. Dean was going to make it happen different.

Dean recalled that in order to do this it might be a good idea to get himself together enough to sit up and maybe think about getting on with things. The thought kind of drifted away. Then, he felt something scrabbling faintly at his wrist. He frowned, absolutely not half asleep and felt Castiel curling his fingers around Dean's wrist.

It wasn't much of a gesture. But it was something.

“Awesome,” Dean mumbled, as if they'd just entered into a pact together. He did not doze off for a second. That would be an insane thing for anyone to do.

 

Dean jerked awake, pushed himself up, and looked down.

Castiel was limp underneath him, his face almost peaceful, his eyelids fluttering. Dean paused for a second to stare at him. He had a face worth staring at.

Dean slapped him, lightly. “Castiel,” he said sharply. “I need you here, man. It's not bedtime yet.”

Castiel's eyes opened wide, pain and tension bleeding across his expression. He blinked, looking confused and distressed. Dean leaned close, patting his cheek. “Cas,” he urged. “Lets go.”

Castiel focused on Dean and inhaled sharply, and it was like Dean could almost see every horrible truth of their situation dump over his head. Cas remembered where he was and what was happening like a guy about to be hit by a bus. The feathers on his wings puffed out the way it did when angels were startled, when they were afraid. Dean almost forgot to be pissed off that the guy had just cooked Dean's arm.

Castiel fixed his attention on Dean's face, panic and something horribly close to despair fading out as he got ahold of himself. “Hello, Dean,” he said, and shut his eyes again. He almost sounded relieved. Like he was glad Dean was there.

“Yeah,” Dean reassured him. He took a deep breath, and looked down at his extractor, still lit up and clamped tightly to the pincer that had given them so much trouble. He scrubbed at his eyes. “And I'm sorry, but I still gotta get this out.”

Castiel looked down. He swallowed hard, and nodded.

Dean started pulling.

It flared up immediately, too bright. Dean kept pulling but he felt a cold shock of real fear when it poured out, over his fingers. Too bright to even look at any more. The sigil on his chest felt like it was trying to pull him out of his own skin.

“Cas, you can't,” Dean ordered. Then he looked over, and saw that Castiel was every bit as desperate as he was.

Castiel's eyes were screwed shut and he was gritting his teeth. His face was red and getting more flushed by the second, like just staying human-shaped was taking every ounce of willpower he had.

Screw this, Dean thought, and ripped the pincer right out of him, like tearing off a band-aid.

Castiel writhed on the ground, kicking his feet out helplessly. He let out a mangled cry that almost sounded like 'please'.

There was a flare of light, too bright. Dean threw the damned pincer aside and rose up over Castiel, both hands pressing down on his chest like he could stop Castiel from trying to break out of his meatsuit through sheer willpower alone. Dean meant to shout at him-he'd already opened his mouth, shouting seemed to work pretty good with Castiel-but he never got the words out. He didn’t need to. The light faded, and Castiel was left panting underneath him.

Dean slumped over him for a moment like somebody had let all the air out of him. “That’s how we do it, buddy,” he mumbled, patting at Cas in exhausted affection. “That’s how we do it.”

Dean might have gotten embarrassed with himself if he'd had time to think about it, but just then he heard something that turned his heart to ice. The sound of a boot on mud. Way, way too close. Someone was sneaking up on them.


	3. Chapter 3

“Dean?” said a familiar voice, just in time to stop Dean from turning and launching himself into what would have probably been a deeply pathetic excuse for an attack. Dean froze, wires crossed, all of his muscles tense and ready to fight.

He looked up, and Sam was staring down at him from maybe fifteen feet away, the shocked look on his face making him look momentarily younger, more like the kid Dean had practically raised.

Dean looked down at himself, half-sprawled over Castiel, muddy and wet, with blood still trailing sluggishly down his left arm. Dean wiped at his face and only succeeded in smearing some mud on it. He let out a breath, a lot of the strain and tension he'd been using to keep himself running draining out. Dean was freakishly tired. If he was honest, probably too tired to finish Castiel on his own. But with Sammy there they could tag-team it. They could still do this.

“Good to see you, man,” he said, and meant every word. He wiped at the mud on his cheek with the back of his hand, and left a dark smear up his arm. His hands were still shaky.

Sam spread his hands, looking rattled. “What happened to you?”

Dean down at Castiel. “Well-” he had meant to say something about how many pincers they'd already got through, and maybe do a little side stepping with an introduction so he could avoid anything resembling what Sam actually wanted to know. But when he looked down he saw Cas' eyes starting to roll back and he realized how weird it had been for Cas not to react to his brother coming up on them all of a sudden like that.

“Hey,” Dean said sharply, pushing himself up onto his knees so he could get close enough to hold Castiel's face between his hands. “We're not doing that now. Come on, Cas.”

He rolled Cas' head a little bit, between his hands, and Cas opened his eyes wide, his body jumping underneath Dean's. Dean smiled at him, reassuringly. It was a pretty comfortable smile to wear. He'd pasted it on often enough.

“That's it,” Dean encouraged, when Cas managed to focus on his face. “We're gonna be just fine. My brother's here, he's going to pitch hit for us.” Sam had split extractor duty with Dean more than once. Dean would just have to get some blood on him. It wouldn't work as well as if Sam had been there to put his own blood in with the spell, but it would do.

Cas frowned at him as if he didn't understand what Dean had just said. “What?” he asked, his voice thready and irritable.

“Dean,” Sam said, sounding suspiciously sympathetic. Dean could not believe Sam was going to try and talk now about the fact that Dean had obviously screwed their 'don't get attached ' policy right in the ass.

Dean refused to look up at him, not wanting to encourage the inevitable.

“I mean,” Dean said deliberately to Castiel, “that Sam is going to split the job with me, getting all this metal crap out of you.”

“Dean,” Sam said again, insistent, and Dean was surprised enough to look at him this time because he had crowded in close and squatted down and apparently Dean just could not win because they were doing this now. In front of Castiel.

“Look,” Dean started.

“-We can't finish the job. We have to get him out of here. Right now,” Sam said earnestly.

“What?”

“Gordon's behind me. Maybe twenty minutes. We gotta book.” Sam put a hand on Castiel's arm, as if to silently say 'let's get him up right fucking now'.

Dean went still, his stomach dropping. He looked down at Castiel's wings, at the pincers still glowing softly among the feathers. Moving him was dangerous as hell. But he knew Gordon, and that guy would kill Dean and Sam both if that's what it took to get to Castiel. Gordon was obsessed.

“The hunter,” Castiel said tightly. Dean saw his feathers bristle slightly, saw Castiel wince in response.

“Yeah,” Sam said, giving Castiel an apologetic grimace. “But it's okay, we'll get you out of here.” He turned to Dean. “I got ahold of Bobby, he's on his way here right now. I'm supposed to meet him at the trailhead. He's bringing the truck.”

“Okay,” Dean said, thinking fast. He pointed at the bowl he'd set aside, still smeared with his and Cas' blood. “Grab that, paint yourself up.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Dean shook his head. “You'll need it if one of those pincers goes bad. You gotta take Castiel. Go,” he gestured towards the woods, “Hide out for a while, circle back around to meet Bobby.”

“What are you going to do?” Sam asked warily.

Dean smiled. “I'm going to lead Gordon away from you. I smell enough like an angel at this point, I might as well be one, right?”

Sam was staring at him with his mouth open. “If he catches you-”

“He'll see I'm not an angel.” Dean shrugged.

“He'll kick your ass. Or worse.”

“He can try. Get painted up,” Dean said.

Sam hesitated, looking torn. “I'll take Gordon. You've already got-”

“Sam,” Dean interrupted, slumping a little, “I'm wiped.” He met his brother's eyes. There was no way Dean was going to be able to carry Castiel two miles to the trailhead. And there was no way Castiel was going to be able to walk it. Never mind what might happen if one of the pincers started to turn on the way and they had to try and get it out on the fly.

Sam leaned a little closer, dropping his voice. “What happened?” he asked. He reached out as if to touch Dean's injured shoulder.

Dean pivoted his body away. He shook his head. He could still feel...something coiling underneath the sigil, something that seemed to have burned into him with Castiel's grip on his arm. Dean didn't know. It was like...his brain didn't want to think about it. The thought kept sliding away from him when he tried to reach for it.

It occurred to Dean that he should definately be more freaked out about whatever-it-was that Castiel had done. Or was doing. But then that thought kind of slid away too.

“I don't know,” Dean said, and that was the honest truth. He offered Sam the extractor.

Looking unhappy, Sam took it, and stood up. Dean watched him pull his shirt up and start to paint blood on his chest with careful precision.

“You're going to make that hunter chase after you,” Castiel said quietly. Dean looked down at him. Castiel was staring at him as if Dean was something that just would not fit into his picture of the way the universe was supposed to look. “This is dangerous.” It wasn't quite a question.

“Gordon won't kill me, he wouldn't dare,” Dean said smoothly. Which was a complete lie, Gordon was absolutely the kind of lunatic who would kill just about anybody if he thought they were in his way, and he thought he could get away with it. But Castiel didn't need to know that, it was bad enough Dean had Sam all freaked out.

Castiel tilted his head, exposing the long line of his neck. “You're lying,” he said.

Dean shut his eyes briefly. “Freaking Counselor Troi...” he muttered.

Castiel sighed. “I don't understand that,” he said wearily.

Dean eyed the pincers still in his wing, just checking them. They didn't look too bad, all things considered. Dean had gotten the worst ones first. Cas could wait, a little. “Yeah?” Dean said absently, “Not a lot of TV in your last digs, huh? Your guy must have been a real jerk.”

Dean was looking over at his brother, checking to see how much longer Sam would be, so he almost missed Castiel's flinch.

Dean looked back down at Castiel, the veneer Dean liked to keep up in shitty situations thinning and melting away, leaving something that just felt like hard concern behind.

Castiel saw it, and looked away from him.“You and your brother should go. You've risked yourselves enough for me.”

Dean made an incredulous noise. “Not a chance.”

Castiel stared at him, his face tightening up and his jaw clenching in a way that somehow made him seem more fragile instead of less. Like he was used to bracing himself against things that never got better, only got worse and worse.

That was something Dean understood way too well.

“Thanks,” Castiel said finally, his voice catching on the word a little.

Dean raised his eyebrows slightly. “We're not safe just yet,” he said with a small smile. He reached over and put his hand on Castiel's chest. Because it was good for him right now, because it would help keep him grounded. Because right then Dean just fucking wanted to.

Dean could feel a humming warmth underneath the sigil on his chest. It felt like something slotting nicely into place.

Sam crouched down by Cas' head, between his wings. He was looking at Dean as if Sam wasn't sure if he was interrupting something awkwardly private. “All set,” Sam said, but there was a question on his face. He was looking between Dean and Cas as if there was something going on besides the obvious life-and-death crap that he needed to figure out.

“Awesome,” Dean replied, and pretended he hadn't noticed.

“Okay, Cas, showtime,” Dean said gently, reaching down for him. Castiel grasped his hand and Dean got the other underneath his shoulder. Feathers brushed over the back of his fingers as Dean pulled and rolled Cas up into a sitting position. At Cas' back, Sam braced him, managing somehow to take weight and avoid the wings.

Cas made a high, soft sound of distress. His head sagged on his neck, his hair brushing Dean's cheek. His wings were doing that shaking thing again and it was really, really hard to look at. Dean looked over them at Sam. There was a mix of awe and pity on Sam's face.

“Jesus, he's cold,” Sam said, his tone of voice implying quite clearly that from the state of him, he should be burning up by now.

Dean's hand was on Castiel's neck. He didn't remember putting it there. He rubbed at the skin with his thumb. Castiel's shoulders relaxed a little. Dean caught Sam's eye and jerked his head in a 'come here' gesture.

Sam crouched down beside Dean, all sympathy and puppy-dog eyes. “Castiel?” Sam said.

Castiel made a soft, strained sound, that could have been taken as an affirmative.

Sam glanced at Dean, his face tightening.

“I'm Sam. I'm gonna get you out of here, okay? You'll be,” he glanced at Dean again, “safe with me.” His voice sounded completely confident.

Lie, Dean thought. He hoped Cas was too tired to spot it.

Castiel nodded his head, letting his eyes slide shut. He was leaning pretty hard against Dean. His wings were dragging on the ground in exhaustion. Dean could spot all the feathers he had shed, left behind him in the mud. Too much stress.

Sam caught his eye, and Dean nodded. He gave Castiel's shoulder a squeeze in warning, and shifted his hold, muscling him up so that Sam could get in a better position. Sam ducked down, grabbed onto him, and heaved.

Cas made a sharp, broken sound, and then Sam was on his feet with an angel thrown over one shoulder.

Dean tried not to notice how little effort Sam seemed to put into it. Dean couldn't remember exactly when Sammy had gotten so goddamned strong.

Dean put his hand on Sam's arm “Hey. Be careful.”

Sam gave him a long look. “You too. Don't do anything stupid.”

Dean made a face at him, scoffing lightly. That was what they did, after all. Sam gave him an unhappy look Dean didn't like much, and took off with Castiel.

Dean grabbed the lantern. As Dean lifted it the light hit Sam's back as he walked away, into the woods. It outlined the tension in his shoulders, the same hitch in his stride that Sam used to get when his backpack was overloaded and he was staggering home after school under the weight of half a freaking library of books. The sharp arch of Castiel's wings were held out slightly to the sides, awkwardly and in obvious pain. The two of them looked vulnerable. Breakable. Like something glass-blown and priceless teetering on the edge of a shelf. Dean felt something twist in his chest.

He clenched his jaw and swung the light away, unsettled by his own brain. He turned away, from the sound of them leaving him, jogged over to the area he could remember throwing his knife. He rustled around in the brush for a few minutes, searching, before he gave it up as a lost cause. He didn't have enough time and it was already too dark.

He returned back to the clearing, and after a moment of picking through the mud, he grabbed his shirt and threw his coat back on. They were dirty, but not completely soaked through. Dean passed the light over the ground and managed to find a few of the pincers he'd removed from Castiel still in one piece, now glittering harmlessly on the ground. He tucked them in one of his coat pockets, and then worked on filling the other with black feathers he had plucked out of the mud. They were softer than they looked. Dean ran one through his fingers, cleaning it off.

Dean shook his head and shoved it in his pocket, the sigil on his chest feeling warm. He didn't know what the fuck was wrong with him, lately.

Sam had gone roughly southwest. Dean ran north. He would cut east as soon as the terrain would let him. If Sam's time estimate was right, Dean still had at least ten minutes on Gordon. As Dean entered the trees he grabbed a handful of brush, snapping twigs and tangling leaves. Then he took a feather out of his pocket and jammed it on the end of a broken twig. He dropped another on the ground, and started running.

For twenty minutes Dean backtracked and pulled every trick he knew without seeing a single hair of Gordon, before it was all rendered pointless with one flash of light.

Dean saw Castiel flare up over the trees behind him, like someone had lit the forest on fire. Hard black shadows suddenly whipped out in front of him, the abrupt brightness making the silhouettes of the trees seem to grab at the ground with long dark fingers.

That was the problem with pulling out those pincers where anyone might conceivably be around to see- a dying angel wasn't exactly inconspicuous.

Dean turned, his stomach plummeting. Sam wouldn't have risked exposing them by trying to extract unless he was completely desperate-

The sigil on Dean's chest suddenly pulsed hot and shivery. Before Dean could tense or try to brace himself, something reached in up under his chest, grabbed a fistful of heart and lungs and started pulling. Dean went down like he'd been swatted, his knees turning wobbly and useless.

The world seemed to roar away from him, everything turning sickening and strange. Dean felt empty and hollowed out and desperate in the worst way. As if he was alone and always would be alone and there was no one in the world left who would give enough of a shit about him to bury him if he dropped dead. It was awful and pleading and despairing and it made him want to claw at himself because more than anything else, he could feel that it didn't belong to him.

It was like Dean could almost feel something tear as he tried to reach out. No one could feel something like that and not be moved, not the hardest bastard Dean had ever met. He didn't even know what the fuck was going on, but suddenly the world swooped back in on him and the sound of his own voice in his ears was insane, Dean was babbling-

“I'm here, I'm here,” Dean was getting mud in his mouth from where his face was pressed against the ground. He forced it shut, a little bit horrified when he half-choked on a sob when he did it. He felt like he was biting on the words, choking them down. _I'm here, I'm right here_.

He took a breath, trying to get himself together and not really knowing why he had to, why this extraction was so different than all the others.

Dean looked up, right into the barrel of a gun.

He froze, and then exhaled slowly. “Gordon,” he said with care. “Awesome.”

Behind the gun, Gordon Walker regarded him silently for a moment. “Dean,” he said finally. He scratched his face, gave a little laugh. “It's a funny place to be taking a hike.” The smile fell off his face. “Smelling like an auction block.”

Dean smiled, warm and charming, his hand already in his pocket. “You know, that's a funny story-”

“Yeah? Why don't you start with the light show behind us.” Gordon held his gun closer to Dean's head. “How many people are working with you?”

Dean spread his hands in a helpless way. He shifted slightly, getting his feet under him. It was a good thing it was dark. “I don't have any idea what you're talking about-”

Dean made a dive for the gun, twisting it away from his head and stabbing Gordon in the wrist with a pincer in one quick movement. Gordon fired once immediately, the shot nearly blowing out Dean's left eardrum, but missing him. After that the pincer dug in and did its work. Gordon flopped on his back with a curse, dropping the gun. Dean scrambled over and stabbed him in the shoulder before he could acclimate to it and try to get up. Pincers didn't affect people like they did angels, but Castiel was some kind of crazy tough little dude, because even just two was enough to make Gordon gasp and go limp. Dean stuck him with a third by his collar bone, just to be sure. And because the guy was an asshole.

If Gordon was as tough as he claimed to be, he should be able to overcome the pain and paralysis in a day or two. At least enough to get the little bastards out.

That would give Dean a good enough head start to get himself, Sam, and Cas the fuck out of town.

“Screw you, Gordon,” Dean said, patting his cheek. He could only hear his voice in one ear. Dean briefly considered going Mad Max on him and swiping his shoes, but Dean wasn’t quite that much of a bastard. Instead, he grabbed Gordon's gun and took off running toward the flickering light still shining over the tops of the trees.

Dean felt like complete crap. He slipped and almost fell on his face just because he was too tired to watch where he was putting his feet. He had to stop and catch his breath twice, leaning over to put his hands on his knees. He'd left Cas with Sam but in some weird way it still felt like Dean was carrying him.

Sam had taken Cas further than Dean expected. He'd gotten them at least halfway to the trailhead. Dean kept expecting he would stumble across them around the next bend, and had to admit he was impressed with how much ground Sam had covered in such a short time. The glow had faded at this point, and Dean wondered suddenly if he was chasing them, if Sam had thrown Cas over his shoulder and took off with him as soon as he got the worst of the pincers out.

Dean staggered his way around a turn and was completely blinded by a flashlight in his face.

His legs almost slid out from under him just as a hand slammed into his chest. He made perhaps the shittiest effort in his life at fighting back, ending up pretty much clinging to the guy’s arms.

“Dean,” Sam said, clinging back all at once. Something brushed Dean’s burned shoulder and Dean flinched away, gritting his teeth.

“Jesus! “ Sam breathed, backing off from Dean a step, the little mini-light flashing across the mud and leaves at their feet. “Are you okay? You look...” Sam grimaced, his face expressive and worried in the sharp shadows.

“Fine,” Dean spat. He leaned over and braced himself on his knees, panting. He rolled his eyes up and silently dared Sam to say anything about it.

Sam frowned like Dean had just failed a math test. “Where’s Gordon?” he said.

Dean shoved himself up and found a cocky smile somewhere. “Oh, he’s gonna be busy for a while. How’s our angel?”

Sam suddenly looked younger, unsure. He started pulling Dean down the trail. “Not so good. I had to extract a few.”

“Yeah, I saw. The whole damn county saw.”

Sam puffed up defensively, which made him seem about nine feet tall. “Dean, I didn’t have a choice.”

“Relax, dude.” Dean tried not to seem like keeping up with Sam was tiring him out. “I saw what his wings were like. I’m surprised you didn’t have to do more. It must have been hairy.”

Sam frowned. “It should have been. It should have been almost impossible.”

Dean scoffed. “What are you, complaining?”

“No. I-”

Sam stopped, probably because it wasn’t important anymore. The beam of light from Sam’s dinky little keychain flashlight was edging on black feathers. Castiel wasn’t moving.

“Damn,” Sam breathed.

Dean almost sat down in the mud. He almost sat down and put his head on the ground and stayed there forever. “It wasn’t-when you left...”

Silently, Sam shook his head.

Several of the pincers in Castiel’s wings were glowing in a peculiar eyebending way, the spells carved into the casings locked open and making a faint, familiar sound that Dean had heard many times. It never failed to make him sick to his stomach. Dean took a breath and wiped at his face.

“Dean...” Sam said softly.

“No.”

“Dean, he’s gone-”

Dean had grabbed his brother by the front of his shirt. Sam’s face was suddenly very close and looking pinched and kind of teary like he had when he was small. “Then we go get him.” Dean said, very clearly.

“Okay,” Sam said, holding out his hands, his eyes wide. Not like he was agreeing, like he was taking a minute to calm down a wild animal.

Dean looked at his own hands twisted into the fabric of his brother’s shirt and didn’t recognize them for a minute. Dean wrenched them away and stepped back. He looked down at Cas.

Depending on the hunter, pincers could have any number of nasty tricks spelled into their casings. Sometimes when you extracted, if there was more than one pincer they started to resonate with each other. The spellwork grabbed on and the angel would start to hallucinate, all kinds of crazy shit. Their grace would twist and detach, loosening from their human form as they got lost. Then the pincers burned right through them. Sometimes if you caught them early, right as they started to drift, you could keep them anchored to reality long enough to get the bad one out.

But once they were gone, it was something else entirely.

Dean supposed Castiel should look like he was sleeping. That would probably be poetic. But he didn’t. He just looked tired and lost and afraid, his eyes cracked open and vacant, reflecting the milky light of the refracting spell.

Something Castiel was seeing, wherever he thought he was, made him flinch. Even hallucinating the guy couldn’t catch a break.

Dean must have made some kind of move. He must have done something, because Sam suddenly caught his arm. His face loomed in close, pinched and serious.

“We can’t do this, dude. We can’t be like this, you know that,” Sam’s voice was gentle. “Not if we’re gonna do this job. Sometimes we just can’t save them.”

Dean took a breath, and spoke as clearly as he was able. “Not this one.”

“Dean-”

“Not this one goddammit!” he snarled, and Sam stepped back from him, looking shaken. “You did it, with Gabriel,” Dean said. “You went in after him.”

“For two seconds!”

“But it worked, Sam. It was crazy, but now the annoying little shit is baking pastries and running angels for us in fucking Manitoba.” Dean knelt down next to Castiel, touched his chest carefully. Too warm, but not dangerous. Not yet. The sigil under Dean’s chest throbbed in a strange way. It made him feel like the ground was moving. “I’m gonna bring him back, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sam cursed, looking pissed, but made no further move to stop him. Dean had him on what Sam had pulled with Gabriel. In fact, just mentioning Gabriel had dragged the argument into a different level entirely.

The way the light from the pincers was pulsing and twisting around made Dean’s head ache, like it was something that wasn’t meant for living things to look at.

“So,” Dean sighed, and looked over his shoulder. “You gonna give me any advice, or what?”

Sam looked a little like someone had let some air out of him. He kept looking between Dean and Castiel as if there was the answer to some giant geek puzzle in what was left of their muddy clothes. Castiel made a small noise, soft and unhappy.

“Sam,” Dean prompted sharply. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

Sam blinked. He wiped at his face. “Okay. Okay. If you’re going to do it, just remember, whatever you see in there, it’s all crap. It’s designed to screw with your head.” He pointed at the ground. “This is the real world.” Sam frowned. “Don’t get lost.”

Dean turned back to stare at Castiel. “Awesome,” he said, and then reached out with his bare hands and grabbed the weirdly glowing pincers.

There was a second when the spellwork on the pincers flared bright and sickening, the light wavering up and through his hands in a way that just wasn’t possible. Then Dean was pulled in.

He wandered in the dark. Or maybe he was still being pulled. The burn on his arm felt like it was clawing at him. It felt like terror and guilt so black he could have just laid down and died from it. Not anywhere anyone sane would want to go, but it also didn’t feel like it belonged to him. Dean followed it like it was a string tugging him along.

Then Dean was coughing, gasping on air so heavy with the ozone smell of terrified angel he wanted to retch. His eyes were watering and he scrubbed at them, trying not to gag. The air felt so thick with the stink of lightning Dean almost felt like he could chew it. He blew air out of his nose forcefully, gritting his teeth, and caught the scent of blood under the ozone.

It was like that was the final piece of the puzzle he needed. With a disturbing sound, almost like a radio tuning into a station, Dean could suddenly hear screams all around him. Both ears, like he’d never even met a guy named Gordon, much less nearly get deafened by him.

He whipped his head around, and there was just as abruptly a place for him to look at. A hallway? Lots of doors, high ceiling. Maybe a warehouse. Dark. Dirty. The screaming was coming from behind the doors. The sound hammered in with a kind of splintering of his brain. It wasn’t a human sound, nothing even close. He thought he might actually be hearing pitches that weren’t possible for humans to pick up. Every hair on his body was standing on end. As incomprehensible as the sound was, he could hear every ounce of anguish and terror in their voices. He felt-

“Don’t open it.”

His hand was on the handle of the door closest to him. Dean didn’t remember doing that.

He looked behind him. Castiel was sitting huddled on the floor.

“Hey,” Dean said in relief, and considered falling over. “Hey.”

Castiel ignored that. His hands were covered in blood. He was holding a long silver knife. It was, to Dean’s surprise, a modified hunter’s knife. Angel specialty.

Dean stared at that for a second, narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and then looked down at himself for the first time. He caught his breath at the sight of the bloody rags he was wearing. They were very...familiar. Dean felt a chill.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “This is all symbolic, isn’t it?”

Cas was squinting at him again as if he was a strange puzzle that needed to be solved. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“No shit,” Dean replied, leaning down. “We gotta-”

The scream that split the air was unendurable. It traveled up the scale of human hearing, leaped off it into space and it was still loud enough to drive a spike into Dean’s head. He yelped and slapped his hands over his ears, falling awkwardly against the wall and Castiel’s shoulder.

Castiel dropped the knife and covered his own ears, smearing blood over his cheeks. Whoever-it-was that was howling took a breath, and Dean dropped his hands.

“It’s not-” real, he meant to say. Cas hadn’t dropped his hands. He looked like he was starting to hyperventilate. “Castiel,” Dean said gently, grasping at his wrist. Dean glanced down at the bloodied hunter’s knife on the floor. Symbolic? Cas hated them. Dean kicked it away. “Cas, look at me.”

Something else cried out. It wasn’t an angel. It was a horrific sound, but at its core very, very human.

Dean inhaled, going still.

The smell of the room had changed slightly. Dean was caught in the pincer’s spell as much as Castiel was now. Apparently the environment was mutable. On some level, he registered a change in temperature on the back of his neck. A breath of hot air. There was a sound, something wet. Tearing. Over that, he could hear the laughter of demons. It was exactly like he remembered.

Dean made a small noise.

No one had ever seen. Never. Sam found him, later. When he was more or less human again. But not this.

Castiel was there Cas was right there Kansas blue he was staring like he was seeing a vision of the lord not a human being becoming less than human not a horror not the thing that Dean never wanted to see again for as long as he lived

_Don’t_

“Don’t look,” Castiel said, his voice suddenly deep and sure. Christ, maybe Dean had it wrong, maybe this wasn’t a Counselor Troi thing, maybe this was a Mr. Spock thing.

Castiel’s hands came up and cupped Dean’s face like the blood on them didn’t matter. Dean was sure he’d seen. He’d seen everything. He had this expression on his face as if he was looking at the sun and not some monster. Dean abruptly couldn't care less about blood.

There was another sound behind, ripped right out of Dean's nightmares.

“Oh well done, Dean,” and Dean twitched like someone had just run current through him. He knew that voice. Nasal and just so pleased with himself and Dean knew all at once that when he saw Alistair's face again his brain was going to split like a rotten apple. He knew it would happen, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

“It’s not real,” Castiel said, and Dean realized Castiel was holding on to him like Dean had been trying to get away. Or turn around. Castiel’s mouth was close enough that he was talking right into Dean’s ear. His breathing was a distraction from the sounds the demons were making. That he was making. Cas was strong, really strong. Dean couldn't pull away from him. It felt slightly insane that he was trying. 

Cas shook him, a little. "It's a trick," he said.

That was right. Sam warned him about that.

Dean put his hands on Castiel’s arms, looking down at the ground. There were drag marks on the concrete, big bloody ones, going from where Castiel had been crouching to the closest door. Dean could hear Alastair laughing behind them, and wondered what nightmares were behind that door for Cas.

_don’t open it_

“Fuck this place,” Dean said, and pulled Castiel into a tight hug. Then he just kept pulling.

Sam was yelling, in the particular tone of voice that mean he was just barely holding it together. Dean had to strain to open his eyes, and promptly fell over. He managed to fall mostly on Castiel’s stomach and not on his wings.

“Dean!”

Somebody was swearing, cursing at Sam and at Dean and there was a lot of light everywhere and Dean could feel feathers bristling and tense all over the place-

‘What the fuck is going on?’ he tried to say, but it came out more like “Whu?”

“Were you two born this stupid or have you been taking lessons?” and no matter how nuts the situation had gotten while Dean was out, just hearing that voice made Dean feel better about it.

Dean choked on a laugh and managed to lift his head. “Hi Bobby, thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, it’s fan-freaking-tastic-”

“Shut up a second,” Sam said and Dean froze, eyes wide. Bobby would kill him for that.

Sam was white and sweating. “Dean, I need to go on this, are you good?” Cas was glowing and Sam hadn’t even started yet.

Dean felt like he was actually a liquid at that point but he shoved himself up and looked at Cas’ face, flinching a little at the heat already starting to rise off of his chest. Sam couldn’t extract unless they had both made it out of the hallucination. Dean was almost sure he’d felt Cas right there with him but-

“Are you both good, I have to go!”

“Go. Shit, go,” Dean said, catching a glimpse of huge, lucid eyes. He fumbled for one of Castiel’s hands, realizing distantly that Bobby had taken off running back toward the trailhead, swearing a blue streak. Dean absolutely did not feel abandoned. He didn’t have time for that. Sam was talking to himself, and that meant he was about to get to work.

“Come on,” Sam muttered, and he wasn’t talking to Castiel or Dean. He did something and Castiel twitched in pain. Dean dragged himself to his feet, and when Cas wouldn’t let go of his hand he just leaned to the side and sort of stepped over his wing. He resettled himself at Castiel’s head, looking right down at his face.

Nobody should have eyes like that. And nobody with eyes like that should look at Dean as if he was somebody they could trust. Not after seeing what Castiel had just seen.

“It’s gonna be just fine,” Dean told him as if it was something he said every day. Like he could just say something like that and walk away from it and still be okay after.

And then Castiel’s face changed. Like he knew what was going on in Dean’s head somehow.

“No,” he said, sad. Disagreeing.

“Come on, come on, I got you,” Sam muttered, distracted. Dean could practically feel him tense. “Brace,” Sam warned, like he always did.

It was a stupid thing to say, and the proof of that was immediately evident when Castiel bristled in response, feathers splaying, expecting pain, and Dean was sharply reminded that Sam had worked on Castiel already.

Sam thought a constant play-by-play was more fair. In Dean’s experience it usually just scared the crap out of them.

Dean heard that happy, familiar little hum of the extractor doing its work, and then light started to spill out from between his brother’s hands.

“Hey, man, you stick with us,” Sam said. He put a hand out on Castiel’s shoulder, avoiding his chest, just as Dean felt a blast of heat hit his face. The sigil split, that strange echo it got when there were two people working an extraction, and Dean could suddenly feel Sam anchoring Castiel down. Slightly removed, but there.

Castiel flashed teeth. Dean was starting to get concerned about his hand.

“Sam-”

Sam gave the extractor a jerk, and the pincer came free with a flash of light and a hiss of pain from Castiel. He sagged into the ground in a way Dean did not like, and this time the heat coming off him did not magically fade away. For a split second Dean wondered if he’d done something to break their streak of good luck, because by all rights and any good sense Castiel should have been dead a long time ago.

Sam looked down at Cas and hesitated over moving right on to the next one, but Dean gave him a dark look. Sam pressed his lips together and got to work. They didn’t have any time to give him a break right now and Sam knew it.

“All right,” Sam said softly, and Cas shut his eyes.

Sam did something Dean couldn’t see, but it made Castiel press his head back against the ground.

“Dean,” Cas said softly. He didn’t say please, but it was there, in his voice.

Dean glanced over at Sam, suddenly feeling horribly exposed. Sam was looking at him. Gabriel might have said something in that tone of voice, to Sam, near the end.

Dean cleared his voice nervously. “Yeah, Cas, I’m here.”

Sam blinked and got back to doing what they were doing but for a second he’d gone alarmingly soft and understanding. They were going to have to Talk About This, he just freaking knew it.

“Ah-hah,” Sam said, and grabbed for Cas’ arm again.

Light and heat started to spill out of Castiel, and it didn’t stop. Dean looked down at Castiel in horror and saw him looking up desperately with blue eyes that were actually glowing blue. For a split second it was like it had been before, when Dean had been alone and stumbling around in the woods by himself, blindsided by pure emotion. It crawled up his arm and nestled under the sigil until he couldn’t breathe with it.

Dean leaned down and grabbed Cas’ face, because he wasn’t wandering in the woods now. Because Cas had looked in Alastair’s face.

“Dammit, I said I’m right here,” he spat. The instant he said it, like a contract had been signed or a spell completed, the emotions curling around under the sigil pulled open his ribcage and did their damnedest to try and drag him face first into the dirt.

Dean stopped himself this time, just barely, though he thought he might have grayed out for a bit there. One thing he did realize was that whatever it was that was happening, it wasn’t enough any more.

There was still a shitload of light coming off of Castiel, and way too much heat. Dean was being squeezed in a way that made him think something he couldn't live without was going to tear and he thought he could feel that Cas was starting to think this wasn’t worth it any more. Dean felt a chill of real fear.

“No you don’t-” Dean began fiercely, and was interrupted by a splash of water to the face.

Castiel caught way more of it, and gasped in relief when it hit him.

Dean gaped at Bobby as he knelt down, canteen in hand, and unceremoniously shoved it at Castiel’s face. Castiel went for the mouth of the canteen like he’d been forty years in the desert without water. Almost instantly, both the light and the heat started to fade.

Dean tried not to faceplant into the ground, and tried not to look like he was trying not to faceplant into the ground.

“Atta boy,” Bobby praised, watching Castiel drink. He let Cas have the canteen as soon as it became apparent he could hold it. Then Bobby eyeballed Sam, who had paused to stare.

“Holy water?” Sam said incredulously.

“I can do a blessing in a pinch,” Bobby said, as if they were both simple for being impressed.

Dean laughed, and tried not to sound hysterical. Bobby frowned at him.

“You look like hot garbage.” Then he turned, dismissing that subject as settled, and leaned over to look at the pincer Sam had been working on. They muttered to each other for a moment. Sam made a quick twisting motion with his free hand, as if discussing football tactics, and Bobby nodded thoughtfully.

They straightened away from each other, and Bobby pulled the canteen from Castiel’s mouth. Then Bobby leaned in close by Castiel’s head, looked right in Castiel’s face. Castiel frowned at him and narrowed his eyes a little, but it was a curious expression, not an aggressive one. He didn’t seem to mind.

Dean stiffened, crowding in anyway.

“Yeah, he’s good to go,” Bobby said, leaning back. His eyes caught Dean’s for a second, and Dean knew that his attitude had been noted. Then Dean didn’t care because in one sharp movement, Sam ripped the pincer right out.

Castiel twisted on the ground. Sam grabbed for him, dodging wings...

And Bobby grabbed Dean, catching him mid-lunge. Outraged, Dean struggled, shoving elbows at him and trying to push him off, but he was exhausted. Bobby pushed his face up against the side of Dean’s head and spoke into his ear.

“Boy, you better take a breath. Sam has got this. He has got this, and you need to let him do what he has to do.”

Dean twisted his head around to look, and saw Sam pouring holy water in a slight stream over Castiel’s chest, keeping it cool enough so he could put his hand there. He was anchoring him. Dean relaxed, feeling stupid. He could actually feel Sam, in the sigil, pulling on Castiel, if he concentrated.

Bobby let go of him, but slowly, like he was just waiting for Dean to do something dumb.

Dean wasn’t so damn tired he would have been insulted. He put a hand over his eyes, caught by a sudden longing for a bed, and didn’t notice that he was getting examined until he felt a touch on his arm. Too close to the burn. He flinched away, glaring. Bobby was giving him an expression that was two parts concern and one part professional interest.

“That’s some love tap.”

Dean made a face at him and refused to dignify that with a comment.

He knelt down beside Sam, who looked kind of exhilarated. Which was, to be honest, a little weird in his opinion.

“You okay?” Dean said, and didn’t specify. After a second, he was shaken to realize he wasn’t actually sure who he meant.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Sam said. “I think we’re good for now. Look,” he gestured at Castiel’s wings.

Dean looked, and then looked again to be sure. One wing was dark and black entirely. Clean. Castiel flexed it slightly, blissfully, against the muddy ground. From the other wing a single pincer winked at them, cold and blue.

“Holy shit,” Dean said, hope rising in his chest. Sam grinned at him, boyish, and Dean had a flash of his face when he was a lot shorter, but still every bit as earnest.

“We can totally do this, dude,” Sam said excitedly.

“So much optimism,” Cas said softly, his voice cracking slightly, “it’s a wonder we got this far.”

Dean gaped down at him for a second, trying to process the fact that he might have just gone in for a joke. Angels, as a rule, weren’t all that much for humor.

“All right, we ain’t done yet,” Bobby said from behind them. He picked up the canteen from the ground and shook it for emphasis. “We’re out of holy water, and after that last little bastard I don’t want to pull another one without some. That last pincer will hold for a while yet. Let’s get him to the truck.”

“We can’t take him to a hotel, Bobby.” Which was where they had stashed all their stuff, and parked Dean’s car.

“We ain’t. Rufus has a cabin up near here. We’ll just borrow it for a few days.”


	5. Chapter 5

Dean looked at Sam and was met with an expression of vague terror, the same one Dean was wearing on his face. Rufus wasn’t going to like them crashing his place without asking, and pissed-off Rufus was even worse than pissed-off Bobby. Dean was glad that after this they would be getting the hell out of this state for a while.

Dean helped Sam lift Castiel up, who was completely exhausted and as limp as a rag. When Dean pulled him into a sitting position he basically had to cradle him, the long black wings dragging behind them both on the ground. Sam’s face got all pinched and he turned solicitous and kind, standing up slow and talking to Cas in a soft voice as he walked, like Cas was an injured puppy Sam had found on the porch.

Dean staggered when he stood and was glad Sam had already turned away with Cas. As it was Bobby stopped dead and looked like he was considering whether he could manage to carry Dean if he had to. The thought of that was enough to get Dean to steady himself. He waved Bobby off with an irritated expression, took a deep breath like he was just winded, and trudged after them.

It was a long goddamn walk.

Bobby’s truck was ugly and busted all to hell, but it ran and it had a big-ass bed. It also had a giant tarp in the back of the truck bed that was capable of hiding a multitude of sins, including two rogue hunters and an escaped angel on the lamb. They were pretty far out, they might not run into anyone and not need to hide under a hot tarp at all. But if they did pass someone, a giant black wingspan was impossible to miss.

Dean didn’t miss the slight look of irritation that passed over Castiel’s face when Sam set him on the tailgate and then hopped up to grab him under the armpits and drag him in.

“Up you get,” Sam said.

“Not an infant,” Dean distinctly heard Castiel mutter, even as he sagged in Sam’s grip. Dean tried to smother a smile, and then tried to climb onto the truck bed himself and almost fell on his face.

When he got up, everyone was staring at him with various degrees of concern.

“Fine,” he said immediately. “I’m fine.” He got up into the truck bed. Carefully.

Bobby tacked the tarp down around them with blocks of wood from the back and a long pipe he had left over from somewhere. It left them enclosed in a stuffy, electric blue world entirely too full of sensitive black feathers.

Then Bobby started up the truck and Dean remembered that he didn’t have shocks worth shit. The first bump they hit he kneed Sam in the stomach. The second bump threw Sam onto a huge black wing, and Castiel screamed. It was a hoarse, terrible sound.

They both scrambled, white faced and panicked, but it wasn’t the wing with the pincer still in it. After that, they all just tried to flatten themselves out as best they could and sweat quietly on each other while the truck rattled around them. It was completely miserable. Dean passed the time quietly planning idle revenge on Bobby and Bobby’s shitty truck.

He could either blame the fact that the tarp had turned everything blue or the fact that he had his face shoved into Sam’s sweaty armpit and was therefore insensible, for why he didn’t notice that anything was wrong.

“Shit,” Sam said, elbowing him in the face to get his attention.

The truck jerked aggressively. Dean risked lifting his head. The last pincer had started to turn bad, the glow burning in, getting brighter.

“Shit,” Dean said, and scrambled for the front. He shoved his head out from under the tarp into fresh air, the roar of the wind suddenly much more real. He pounded on the dirty window that separated him from the back of Bobby’s head, his shirt flapping behind him.

Bobby turned his head without looking and shouted back something Dean couldn’t hear. Dean cupped his hand over his mouth to focus the sound.

“How long?”

Bobby held up a hand with five fingers spread, and then again. Ten minutes. Dean yelled at him to haul ass if he didn’t want barbecue in his truck bed by the time they got there, but he wasn’t sure how much of it Bobby got. Enough that Bobby floored it, and almost put Dean back on his ass. He had to scramble to get back under the tarp.

He shoved it up out of his face and his heart sank as he realized Sam was leaning over Castiel, both hands on his chest, talking to him quietly. Sam already had to pull him back, not good.

Dean crawled over.

“It feels like you’re alone but you aren’t, that’s just a trick, it’s how those things get to you. I’m here with you, and Dean’s here too,” Sam was saying softly.

Dean stared at Sam, surprised. He hadn’t realized that horrible lonely shitty feeling he always felt through the sigils was the pincers messing with them, making them feel like garbage and want to die. He just figured angels were kind of generally miserable. Given their lives before most of them escaped, he didn’t blame them. Dean froze for a second, thinking about all those texts Sam sent to Gabriel, all the hours he spent talking to any angel just because he had a giant nerd brain and was so curious about everything. Dean had done maybe twice as many extractions as Sam had, and for the life of him Dean couldn’t really figure out why it hadn’t even occurred to him to just fucking sit down and talk to them about angel shit before.

He hadn’t thought it would be productive. He thought it would make him care too much.

Sam knew more than Dean did about his own shit. It would probably be more embarrassing if Sam wasn’t so smart.

Dean shook his head. Business now, feelings later. “Ten minutes,” he said.

Sam shot him a grim expression. “You got a stronger tie to this one,” he said.

Dean tensed all over. They were going to fight about that, he knew they were going to fight about that, but not here, not now, was Sam nuts...

Sam was looking at him with an expression he didn’t like at all, and he was moving away from Castiel. “With the ritual, Dean. The sigil used your blood.” And he gave Dean a look, like he knew exactly what was going on in Dean’s head.

Dean set his jaw, and with some effort ignored Sam, like he hadn’t given anything away at all. Dean was pretty good at it, he had a lifetime of practice. He tried to scoot closer to Castiel, but had to brace himself to keep from landing on him when the truck hit a bump. Gingerly, he crawled over his wingspan, settling down beside him. Dean tried not to eye the last pincer, glowing ominously, and grabbed Castiel’s hand.

He felt a little stupid. Heartfelt reassurances were Sam’s thing. Then Cas looked up at him and he just looked so fucking tired, tired of everything, that Dean forgot he hated looking stupid.

“Hey,” he said. The truck rattled around them. “Almost made it.” Cas let out a breath that was probably the saddest excuse for a laugh ever. Dean would have liked it a lot if he didn’t ever have to hear it again. He leaned in, feeling the heat from Castiel’s chest warming his face. Dean lowered his voice. “You and me, Cas. We’re gonna get through this. Just like I promised.”

Cas almost looked fond of him for a second. Like he was still seeing something impossible and inexplicable, but was happy about it now. Cas shut his eyes, smiling faintly. “I’m glad it was you I met in the woods.”

Dean frowned. Cas said it like he meant he was glad Dean had been the last person Cas had met. Dean was not cool with the whole ‘going gently into that good night’ thing. He glanced at his brother, who just looked worried.

“No way,” Dean said, and patted Cas’ cheek when he wouldn’t look at Dean right away. Cas made a face at him, looking distinctly less charmed than he had a moment ago. Dean pushed, because he always pushed. He didn’t know any other way to be. “Look, do that thing,” Dean demanded, and glanced at his brother, feeling weirdly hunted. “That you’ve been doing. Whatever it is. I can feel when it happens, just do it again, right now.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam asked, miserably failing to hide his suspicion.

“Not now,” Dean snapped. “Cas, just do it!”

Cas looked at him closely, and then reached up, and grabbed Dean’s shoulder exactly where he’d burned it. Dean hissed and stiffened, expecting agony. There was nothing. He looked down, confused, and kept staring when Castiel pulled his hand away leaving smooth skin. Perfectly healed.

“You did as well as any of my brothers would have,” Cas said quietly. “But I can’t call any more, you’re too tired.”

“What? I’m fine-”

Then something in the casing of the pincer splintered, and light spilled into the space between the truck bed and the tarp. Castiel arched like a bow string, his wings splaying in agony, and Sam stopped looking at Dean like Dean had tried to get away with something and started howling for Bobby.

Dean cursed and started fighting with the tarp as a blast of heat sizzled against the plastic. They were going to get cooked. Before he could get himself untangled Bobby slammed on the brakes and Dean was pitched shoulder-first into the front of the truck bed. It didn’t hurt any more than it would have on any other, not-burned-by-an-angel day.

Sam leaped to his full giant’s height and swept the tarp off them like a magician doing a trick. Dean scrambled for Cas, pinning the offending wing down with his knees.

“Cas you gotta stop, we’re going to get this out, you-” flailing, Cas almost clocked him in the ear. Dean barely ducked out of the way. His eyes were glazed over. Dean wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but there was too much heat coming off his chest to touch it and try to pull him back.

Sam threw himself full length against the wing they needed to get at, and with all the holes in it that must have been agony for Cas, but it was the only way Sam was ever going to get a grip on the last pincer now.

“Hold him down!” Sam said, and Dean loved him for not even trying to suggest they should give up or stop.

Dean couldn’t get close to his chest but he threw a leg over Castiel’s shoulder, pinning his upper half down at least.

“Brace!” Sam shouted, ridiculously.

“Oh for- he’s biting me, he’s biting me, Sammy!” Dean yelped, trying to both squirm away and keep Cas pinned.

“Don’t you dare move right now,” Sam swore.

The light flashed and Cas sunk his teeth into Dean’s thigh. Dean made a strangled, high pitched noise that he would deny until his dying day.

Then, like a reprieve from on high, water started pouring down on their heads.

It hit Cas and he gasped like a drowning man coming up for air, his eyes clearing. It damn near sizzled where it hit Castiel’s chest, and against all logic, he started cooling down almost instantly.

Dean popped his head up, blinking water out of his eyes and looking incredulously over towards the cabin. Bobby was standing there holding a hose, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world to be doing. He had his thumb over the mouth, making it spray.

Dean looked up at the water falling down on his head, over at Bobby, then down at Castiel, who looked like he was only awake through sheer determination. He had his mouth open to the spray like a kid trying to catch snowflakes, like he was desperate for it. Dean looked over at Sam, who was openly gaping at Bobby.

“Holy water?” Sam said, disbelievingly.

Bobby sniffed. “I blessed the hose.”

Dean let out a breath. “Bobby,” he said, awed. Dean would have crawled over the side of the truck and kissed him on the mouth if he could have.

Dean turned to Sam and made a ‘go ahead’ gesture. Sam flipped his ridiculous, too-long hair out of his eyes and pulled the last pincer out like it was easy. There was a brief flare of light, but they were soaked in holy water- it was raining the stuff- the spells couldn’t have caught if they had smashed the casing open with a hammer. The pincer fell away, and they were done.

Sam flashed Dean a grin at the exact moment Dean looked at him, grinning back. Like they were both kids again, thinking on the same wavelength. They'd just done the impossible. Together. Then Sam turned away and practically threw himself at the side of the truck, laughing.

“This is great, Bobby, we gotta get a pool. You can bless that, we’ll never have to work again.”

Bobby nodded soberly and sprayed Sam in the face, slapping his girlish locks right into his mouth.

Dean looked down at Castiel, and his good mood fell away. Cas was white and still on the bed of the truck, his eyes shut. He looked like a corpse, and Dean had seen a few. Not dead, he thought with a chill. Not after all that.

“Hey,” Dean said sharply, grabbing his shoulder and giving him a shake. Castiel’s eyelids flickered in a distinctly ‘I am alive but consciousness can fuck off’ way. Dean let out a sigh, his head briefly sagging on his neck. He gave Cas a pat, feeling ridiculously fond of him all of a sudden. Cas hadn't died on him. “Ok buddy," he said, his voice warm. "You earned a nap.”

Sam turned to them. A strand of wet hair was stuck to his lip like a mustache. He looked down at Cas and the smile fell off his face. The guy really did look like shit.

“Is he-?”

“He’ll be fine” Dean said, probably a little too sharply. He scrubbed the water off his own face with a violent motion. “Hey Bobby, cool it on the hose, ok?” He put one hand on Castiel, feeling weirdly possessive, and gestured at the cabin with the other. “He’s freezing, we gotta get him inside.”

It was always harder than Dean remembered, maneuvering around a limp person with giant wings. When they were in pain and half conscious it was one thing- they had this kind of reflex to hold the wings in- but once an angel was totally out they suddenly had these huge awkward appendages with delicate feathers flopping everywhere. It took even longer than it would have because Sam threw a weird fit over how muddy Castiel wings were and insisted on washing the dirt off him. As if Castiel would care about how dirty his feathers got after cheating death. But Sam pulled out the puppy-dog look, so Dean and Bobby stood at the end of the truck bed, straining with the weight of Castiel’s giant, wet wings. Sam fussed over his feathers with the hose for a ridiculous amount of time while Castiel drooled peacefully on Dean’s shoulder.

It took all three of them to get him inside. Cas got the bed without question. Once they managed to arrange him so nothing was dragging on the floor, Bobby stomped over to the couch and settled down with a satisfied expression. He folded his arms and looked over at Sam and Dean like he was daring them to comment on the sleeping arrangements.

“Blankets are in the closet,” he said, and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

Dean and Sam exchanged a look. “I’ll make some coffee”, Dean offered. Sam turned and started digging in the closet without comment.

"While you're up, get my bag from the truck," Bobby said nonchalantly. Dean gave him an incredulous look. Bobby didn't move a muscle. "If you're too dumb to sleep you might as well be useful."

Dean let out a breath, shaking his head. He couldn't believe the crap he had to put up with. He still went and got Bobby's bag, though.

Sam set himself up on the floor by Castiel’s bed, like a silent guard. Dean heard him shifting around as usual before he finally settled down and fell asleep. Bobby started to snore a little. Dean sat up at the table and leaned over his coffee, watching them and trying to ignore the irritating ringing in his left ear. There was something warm and fragile about Sam and Bobby and Castiel all there together. It reminded him of watching Sam walk off into the woods carrying Castiel on his back. Something precious and breakable.

They had just completely crushed a totally impossible extraction. They’d saved an angel that by all rights should have died, like a couple of Big Damn Heroes. He’d saved Anna’s brother. These were all things that Dean was happy about. Worth some temporary hearing loss. He would have been drinking beer and celebrating properly, if he didn’t have this nagging suspicion that he’d forgotten something. Something bad. He poked at the vague feeling like a sore tooth.

Gordon had no way to find them, and they should be out of the state before he even got mobile again. He wasn’t well liked in the hunting community- even if he did turn up yelling about how the Winchesters were helping angels, Dean was pretty sure most people would come down on their side of it. If there had been any other hunters searching for Castiel’s trail, they were miles away from them now. Dean couldn’t think what he was missing.

Watching everyone sleep, he was struck by the strange thought that he couldn’t protect them. He sat there, dissatisfied with himself, until the sky started to lighten in the windows.

What felt like hours later, Dean woke up with his head on the table and a vicious crick in his neck. Somebody was cooking...something. He wiped at his face blearily. Bobby was over by the stove stirring a pot.

“It’s oatmeal or nothing,” he said without turning around. Dean made a face at his back.

He looked over at the bed, expecting to see Castiel passed out. Instead, Castiel was propped up on his elbows, looking alert. Sam was sitting beside the bed, his head bent close, his voice too low to hear. Sam gestured, spreading his hands, and Castiel nodded thoughtfully, his eyes following the movement.

Dean frowned. It would make no sense for him to be bothered by the quiet little conversation they were having. It would be completely ridiculous for him to feel left out. Sam knew how to talk to angels- Dean had known that for years. He was used to seeing Sam off in a corner somewhere with one of their angels, all earnest and sympathetic. Maybe it was just that he’d never put it together how much more Sam was learning about angels while he was spending all that time with them. All those hours Sam had spent with Gabriel on the phone. Dean had made a lot of innuendos about the two of them ‘sharing recipes’ but he hadn’t actually given it a lot of thought. The fact that he felt uncomfortable now definitely had nothing to do with this particular angel. Dean just didn’t like secrets. That was definitely it.

He got up and walked over to them, shoving his hands in his pockets. They both looked up at him. Castiel was more-or-less clean, and dry, and his shockingly blue eyes weren’t red rimmed and exhausted. He looked about ten million percent better than he had.

“Well, look at you,” Dean said warmly, abruptly pleased as hell. “Looking good there, Cas.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is taking a few more chapters to tell than I expected, fyi

Cas brightened at the sight of him but looked thrown off when Dean spoke. Castiel squinted a little, then looked down at his own hands as if Dean had actually asked him to examine himself. “I suppose? I am much cleaner than yesterday.”

Dean stared at him. He didn’t know what to do with that. “Uh, I guess,” Dean said. Cas was apparently a literal guy.

Castiel looked satisfied. Dean looked up at the ceiling. Sam was holding in a laugh and wiped his hand over his mouth like he could straighten his expression with his fingers.

Dean shot him a dirty look.

“Yeah, Sam was pretty nuts about cleaning out your feathers last night,” Dean said, spitefully. “He had us out there with you and the hose for damn near twenty minutes.” That was a lie, it was more like ten, but it had felt like twenty.

Dean expected Sam to be defensive- he really had been ridiculous about it. Dean didn’t expect Cas to look over at Sam with an openly grateful expression, like Sam had done something fantastic. Sam smiled at him and dipped his head. A little silent ‘yeah no problem’, like he knew exactly what he’d done.

Dean had only been asleep a couple hours and they already had their own secret language. Dean did not feel left out.

_This sucks._

Sam was smothering a smile and glancing at Dean like he knew exactly what was going on in his head.

“Angels don’t do dirty feathers, Dean.” He gestured with one hand. “It’s...cultural.”

“Oh-kay,” Dean said making a face like Sam was a weirdo and he absolutely wasn’t feeling insecure for not knowing this stuff. He was really going to have to hit up some of Bobby’s books about angels later. He pointed at the stove, at Bobby still stirring his slop. “I’m gonna get something to eat. You guys can,” he flapped his hand at them, “exchange cultures.”

Dean grabbed a bowl for oatmeal and glanced over at Sam and Cas, talking like they were best friends. He peered into the pot and grimaced a little at the look of it. Well, better than nothing. He grabbed another bowl for Cas. Cas wasn’t a big guy, but he was all lean muscle, like a swimmer. Or like somebody who worked hard and didn’t get enough to eat. Dean put a little extra in Castiel’s bowl. He specifically did not grab one for Sam.

Bobby gave him a look like he thought Dean was an idiot.

Dean puffed himself up. “What?” He demanded.

Bobby looked unimpressed. “Uh-huh,” he said, and shoved a couple of spoons into Dean’s hand. He stepped away from the stove.

“We should be getting the seals off him soon,” Bobby said, mostly to Sam.

Castiel frowned and put his hand on the back of his neck, where a sigil was stamped right into his skin. They used to carve them by hand, but Dean knew they favored branding nowadays. “Nobody can break these seals. Not even me, not completely.”

Dean looked over at Sam, and they shared a smile. They always had fun giving out this particular bit of good news. Every angel that was sold had a seal put on them, binding them into their vessels, forcing obedience. Usually at the base of the neck, over the spine. Above the wings. Runaways were invariably angels that were motivated enough to weaken them. It required constant, heroic levels of effort. A vanishingly small number of angels could manage it- they were usually either the seriously powerful ones, or the angels that had seriously powerful motivation. The seals were tough enough to crack that most angels thought it was impossible to completely break free. They were wrong.

“Well, we ain’t nobody,” Bobby said, sounding pleased. “We’re not exactly new at this. You’ll be full power in no time. It’ll take a bit of cutting to get through them, so I hope you’re not squeamish.”

Castiel had that stunned, hopeful look on his face Dean knew from other angels that had received this particular piece of good news. Some of them couldn’t even remember what being full power felt like, but they all brightened up like Christmas trees when they found out it was a possibility. Dean supposed it should probably make him feel bad, knowing that the process of stripping angels from their metaphysical chains was obscure enough that most angels hadn’t even heard of it. Seeing them all so delighted by something so simple, though- it was pretty fucking gratifying. The closest Dean ever came to feeling like a genuine ‘good guy’. Fighting villains and swooping in with miracle saves.

Sam was grinning at Castiel’s reaction. He reached toward his belt and pulled out his hunter’s knife; Quickly, no-nonsense.

Castiel freaked.

Dean dropped the bowls and lunged across the room. Cas was scrambling to get away, tripping on the chairs they had dragged over to keep his wings off the floor. The look on his face was chillingly similar to how he’d looked trapped in his nightmares, the moment Dean had first seen him huddled against the wall. Terrified. Hopeless. His bare chest was heaving- Dean could see him hyperventilating.

Dean wrenched the knife out of Sam’s hand and threw it, embedding it in the wall above the sink on the other side of the room. It sank about two inches into the wood with a solid ‘thunk’. Dean had thrown it a good two feet wide of Bobby, but Bobby ducked anyway.

“What the hell-” Bobby began.

“He doesn’t like knives,” Dean said, cutting him off. Castiel’s horrified attention was still on Sam. The look in his eyes… he looked how Dean had felt, hearing Alistair’s voice again. He didn’t know what Cas had seen in that dream before he’d showed up. Dean was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.

Dean stepped between Cas and Sam, forcing Cas to focus on him. He spread his empty hands. No more knife.

“Hey, Cas,” he said very gently. “Remember what I said? We went through a hell of a lot to keep you alive, we’re not gonna kill you now.” He stepped closer, and Cas allowed it.

Cas stared at Dean’s empty hands. He relaxed just slightly, his feathers going down a little.

Dean lowered his voice. “I’m not gonna let anybody else come after you either. You and me, Cas, right? We got this.”

Cas looked up at his face like Dean was pulling him up out of a well. After a long moment, he nodded. He looked at something behind Dean, like he was reassuring himself. Dean looked over his shoulder. Cas was staring at the knife, still embedded in the wall.

Dean could see Cas was still breathing hard. There was a smear of dirt on his chest Sam had missed with the hose. As finicky as Sam had been, they hadn’t been able to get everything. The sheets were probably a wreck.

“Right,” Dean said, like he was completely in charge of the situation and always had been. He glanced up at Castiel’s wings, which were still a little worse for wear. “We’re gonna go outside for a while, and I’m gonna do your wings up right. Soap and water and everything.” Dean extended a hand. “You think you can walk ok?” He deliberately avoided asking Cas if he wanted to go- they were going.

Cas looked at him for a second, his feathers settling into something resembling normal. Then, he reached out and took Dean’s hand in his. Dean’s mouth dropped open a little. Pretty much the last thing he’d expected was to be holding hands like they were going steady or something. Castiel nodded at him with deadly seriousness, like there was nothing strange about it at all.

Dean let out a breath, and tugged him toward the door. Cas was a little wobbly, but Dean didn’t plan on taking him far. When he got to the door, he let Cas go ahead of him, kind of ushering him through. It only felt strange after it happened. He’d done that with girls before. On dates.

Dean refused to let that thought settle in his brain, at least half because it felt inappropriate given what had just happened. He turned back to Sam, who was looking crestfallen. Then, pointedly, Dean looked over at the knife in the wall. Sam nodded.

“Dean,” Bobby said. He tossed a bottle of dishwashing soap to him. Dean caught it one-handed and gave him a little salute with the bottle.

Rufus had a beat-up 69 Plymouth that had been rotting in front of the cabin for the last few years. Dean patted the hood, inviting Cas to sit. The sun was out, and the metal was warm under his hand. Cas carefully eased himself up, shifting to find a comfortable position with a flutter of feathers. He ran his hands over the hood, like the heat soaking into his palms felt good. He had nice hands.

Dean paused. He knew firsthand how tough the guy was. Dean could see the muscles in Castiel’s back and arms, but he suddenly looked fragile. He looked like somebody trying to distract himself from terrible thoughts with a small physical pleasure. For no reason at all, Dean thought about the whiskey he had stashed in the trunk of the Impala.

Dean leaned against the front right panel of Rufus’ car, suddenly wanting to talk instead of thinking. Cas gave him a weary look, not even trying to pretend they’d come outside just to give him a bath.

“I should apologise,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “To your brother.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“He won’t take it personally, take it from an expert.”

Cas didn’t look particularly comforted, looking down at his hand on the hood of the car as if it was fascinating. He was more tanned than he’d looked last night in the dark. Dean wondered where Cas had been working, before he ran away.

“You know, I get it,” Dean said. He folded his arms. “After...what happened with me,” he paused, looking away. There were crickets or something in the weeds, making little peaceful insect noises. Spring had dotted the weeds with flowers. He didn’t exactly feel safe, but it was probably as close as he would get. It never really felt safe to talk about what had happened to him. “After Alistair, I couldn’t even stand to be in the kitchen if Sam had a knife in his hands. It was….well. It was rough for a while,” Dean shrugged, glancing at Cas like it was an accident, like he was just another part of the scenery that just happened to be around while he was talking. “So, yeah, I get it.”

“You carry a knife now,” Cas said, squinting at Dean in the sunlight.

“A demon-killing knife,” Dean corrected, not exactly hiding the pleasure he felt in that particular truth. Psychology was crap; Payback was the best catharsis.

Castiel knew the feeling. Dean could tell just by the look on his face. He surprised Dean by smiling, soft and slow. It didn’t stop him from looking sad.

“I can understand the sentiment,” Cas said. His hands were tracing over the peeling paint on the hood of the car, over and over. Physical distraction.

_I bet._

Dean suddenly wished he could see Cas smile for real.

“Did you kill him? The demon?” Cas asked, the softness of his voice a shock. Dean opened his mouth, feeling abruptly like he was the one standing around in Rufus’ pajama pants and nothing else. Almost naked.

The door banged open, and Cas jumped a little. Dean did not jump. It wasn’t like they’d been having some kind of intense moment or anything. That would be stupid.

Sam walked over with a couple of ratty towels, looking apologetic. He glanced over at Cas as he carefully set the towels on the roof of the car and drooped a little at whatever he saw. He had the knife back at his belt. Dean couldn’t really see, but he thought Cas was staring at it.

“Uh, we’re gonna go into town,” Sam jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “Bobby wants to pick up a couple of things, and I was gonna get the car before somebody who knows better starts sniffing around and finds it. Maybe while we’re gone you can...” Sam looked pointedly at Castiel. He didn’t finish his thought, but the idea was perfectly clear.

Fix this.

Out of pure reflex, Dean wanted to protest. He wanted to tell Sam there was no way he was letting Sam get his baby when he was perfectly capable of getting her himself. He shut it off quickly when his brain caught up and he realized what Sam was saying. They needed to get the seals off Cas, and not just because when they did he would get full use of his powers again. If somebody was smart and motivated enough they could put a spell together to track him by those seals. If Cas had been in better shape last night they would have done it immediately.

“Fine,” Dean said, grudgingly, “but pick up some burgers. I’m not eating anything Bobby cooks unless I have to.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “We could eat something else sometimes.”

Dean gave him a mutinous expression. Sam sighed, defeated, and turned back toward the cabin.

“And pie!” Dean shouted after him.

Silently, over his shoulder, Sam flipped him off.

The tension had bled out of Cas as they talked. Cas was staring at Sam’s back with polite confusion, as if their interaction was a puzzle he was interested in putting together.

Dean watched Sam walk off toward Bobby’s truck, watched Bobby bang the door to the cabin shut and hop up in the driver’s seat. He could see Sam tossing his stupid hair out of his face. Dean had started to fear there was a man bun in Sam’s future.

He gave Cas a firm pat on the shoulder. “Hang on,” Dean said, and went to wrestle with the hose. Bobby and Sam drove off, Bobby’s truck rattling, his shitty suspension bouncing the wood and metal in the bed of his truck around. Dean slowly dragged the old hose over, watching the dust they had kicked up start to dissipate.

Dean turned the water on and dropped the hose at Castiel’s feet with a huff of breath. Cas was sitting with his feet dangling a good foot off the ground, tapping his heel against the bumper like a little kid in a chair too big for him. He didn’t look up, absorbed in quietly examining the label of the bright green dishwashing soap.

Dean raised his eyebrows and nodded at the bottle. “Good enough?” He said, only half serious.

Cas held it out for Dean to take. “This is fine,” he replied, humorless and sincere.

The water was icy cold and Cas hissed in a breath when Dean started hosing down his wings. “We’ll find you something dry to wear when we get done with this,” Dean said apologetically. He soaped up his hands and gently started in on Castiel’s feathers. He was slow and delicate about it, thinking about all the little wounds the pincers had left behind. Cas didn’t give any indication that it even bothered him. Dean wasn’t really surprised; Anybody who could handle that many pincers could probably take a shot in the mouth from Anderson Silva and come up fighting.

It took longer than Dean thought it would. He should probably stop giving Sam a hard time about having them stand around holding Castiel’s wings- apparently he’d actually done a pretty quick job. It took a long time to rinse out all those feathers. There was something surprisingly relaxing about it, though. Cas must have thought so too; In less than ten minutes he was leaning forward, resting his elbow on his knee with his chin in his hand. When Dean leaned in to sneak a look, he saw Cas had his eyes closed contentedly. Dean caught a weird scent when he got close; There was something familiar about it, but he couldn’t place it. It was clean, somehow. Dean went back to working the feathers carefully between his fingers, poking at his memory.

The sun felt good on his shoulders, cutting the chill of the water from the hose. His concerns of last night seemed very far away. He hummed a little, under his breath. The smell was suddenly stronger, like freshly washed sheets. Crisp and clean. Dean took a deep breath, and the memory suddenly slid neatly into place. No wonder he hadn’t recognized it right away; He didn’t get a lot of opportunity to encounter it in his line of work. Happy angel. The scent cleared the air. It was like nothing evil or foul could possibly exist while it was there. People had tried to use it in hospitals at one point, he remembered. There was something about it that helped people heal. The idea never worked, though. You couldn’t force an angel to be happy, no matter what else you could force them to do.

Dean fumbled with a feeling he couldn’t identify. The sky was clear, the sun was warm, and his angel was happy. He hummed a little more, softer, almost testing something.

_Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair-_

Dean leaned close to Cas, as if someone might overhear. “Sam did it.”

Castiel turned to him, a question on his face. The sun lit his eyes and fuck everything if they weren’t the same deep blue as the sky right overhead. Like summer had somehow wrapped itself into a person.

“Alistair. I never got the chance. Sam killed him for me.” It felt weird to say it out loud.

There was pause.

“Good,” Cas said, fierce.

Dean stared at him. Something huge started trying to beat its way out of his chest. Cas looked sort of violently pleased.

Sam had told Dean he was worth it. Said he was worth all the trouble they had been through with the demons because of killing Alistair. Sam had always stuck by him- they were family. Still, Dean had wondered now and then while they were fighting and being hunted down by every shitty asshole in the continental US with black eyes, if Sam had ever wished he’d done something else. He wondered-

Cas was looking at Dean like he would’ve enjoyed watching Sam kill that son of a bitch. Like Cas would have helped.

If Cas had said that in front of Sam or Bobby, Dean would have laughed the whole thing off. Chick flick moments need not apply. If they’d been there, Dean wouldn’t have said anything in the first place.

When he and Cas got pulled into that shared nightmare, Dean remembered trying to turn and look at what Alistair was doing to him. Dean knew what he’d done, he deserved to suffer for it. But if Dean had looked, and saw what Alistair was making him do, he wouldn’t have come back a whole person. Everybody had a point where they broke. Everybody screamed eventually.

But Cas had been there, Cas pulled him away. Right out of hell.

 Dean’s ears were buzzing and his face felt hot and he leaned forward and kissed Cas full on the mouth. He shut his eyes and threw himself into it like Cas was the whole world. For a second he was terrified, mostly of himself. Then, Castiel made a small sound and opened his lips under Dean’s mouth, just a little.

Something in Dean’s chest that was tense and sore relaxed all at once. This was what he wanted, Dean realized. It snuck up on him somehow, but he wanted it. Cas tasted like everything pure in the world. Dean felt like he was getting scrubbed clean from the inside out. It was absolutely fantastic. Cas had rough stubble on his cheeks; The scratch of it felt masculine, exciting. He also had a good thick head of hair, and the length at the back was just enough to get a grip on. Dean was already thinking of doing a lot more than just kissing.

Dean tried to pull back for a second, make some kind of half-assed ‘are you sure about this’ gesture. Things were getting intense fast, and Cas had just been through some serious shit. But pulling back from Castiel’s lips was murder- he felt like he was tearing himself in half just trying to get far enough away to talk. Cas kept leaning in, chasing after his mouth. Dean kissed him again, briefly, trying to take the sting out of it. And then again. And then Cas was licking into his mouth, and he forgot to care.

 Cas grabbed at Dean like he was absolutely loving it, and he had a hell of a grip. Christ, Cas knew what Dean was, he’d seen, and he still wanted to…

Dean caught hold of Castiel’s hips and hauled him close, coming up snug and perfect against Castiel’s thigh. Cas was poking him in the hip, and it felt fantastic. Dean slid a hand up the middle of his back, between his wings, meaning to pull him even closer.

Castiel froze.

Dean paused, slowly lifting his hands. That was not a good reaction. “Cas?” He tilted his head down, watching Castiel’s face closely.

“I’m fine,” Cas said, not looking fine.

Dean sighed and stepped away. “Okay, see, that’s not gonna work, Cas-”

Cas grabbed the lapels of his jacket and yanked him back. “Dean.” He didn’t look traumatized, he looked frustrated. Impatient. With himself?

“This,” Cas leaned against him, making a point with the warmth of his body, “feels good.”

Dean caught his breath, suddenly getting it. When was the last time Cas had felt good about anything? Cas’ face was saying it had been way, way too fucking long. Like he was a guy whose life was just one long highway of suck. Dean could suddenly see himself, clear as day, beating the living shit out of whoever had made Castiel’s life so shitty.

Instead, he leaned down and kissed Cas again. He was as gentle about it as he had ever been towards anyone in his life. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Cas relaxed. Dean leaned into him, and it was warm and sweet. He was leisurely about it. Like they had all the time in the world. It made him feel quietly satisfied inside, like he felt after a day in the sun working on his baby. This was the kind of thing Dean didn’t usually go for. At that moment he could have crawled into Castiel’s lap if it meant he could have more. Cas was kissing him like Dean was showing him something brand new and amazing. He kissed like kissing was all he wanted to ever do.

Dean pulled back a little, teasing, like he hadn’t just poured half his heart out onto the ground. He lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah?” Asking if it was good, but already knowing damn well that it was. Casual and charming.

Cas gave him a faintly irritated look, as if he couldn’t imagine why the hell Dean had stopped or why he wasn’t immediately continuing. Dean grinned. He leaned in, laughing into Cas’ mouth a little. Cas grabbed two fistsfuls of Dean’s coat, yanking him closer.

Dean could feel the hard tent in Cas’ stupid pajama pants pressed up against him. All of a sudden Dean was a little hungrier than he had been, thinking about what else they could do besides make out. Cas started making little happy noises, into Dean’s mouth and against his lips, and Dean almost lost his cool completely. He wanted to shove Cas down on the hood of the car. He wanted Cas under him, making noise like that forever. Dean reached down between them and just thumbed at the opening to Cas’ pajama bottoms. The fabric was loose, and Cas’ dick was pretty damn eager to be free. His erection slipped neatly into Dean’s hands, almost like it was an accident. Dean gave it a little squeeze, just saying hello.

Cas made a sputtering sound and looked down. Dean ran his thumb over the head of Castiel’s dick. Cas gasped, and Dean smiled to himself, feeling like a champ. He started stroking Cas in an extremely friendly fashion. Firm, but not too firm; The way Dean liked it when somebody had his dick in their hands. Cas looked back up at Dean’s face, his mouth open. He looked like somebody had just hit him in the head with a brick. He looked like a dude who hadn’t been laid in a decade. Dean was betting that Cas would go off like a rocket.

“Is that good?” he said, his voice low. Cas was looking at him like Dean was walking on water. He grasped clumsily at Dean’s shoulders, as if he was afraid that if he didn’t physically keep Dean right where he was, then Dean might decide to stop and wander off somewhere.

“Yes.” Cas tightened his grip on Dean, one quick convulsive flex of his fingers. “Dean…” There was a crack in his voice. The sound burrowed into Dean’s brain, shorting out higher functions. This was the hottest thing he’d done in years.

Dean grinned and kissed at Cas’ lips, sloppy and inaccurate. Cas made a soft, fragile sound into Dean’s mouth, and came in his hand. It slicked up Dean’s fingers as he worked Cas through it. Dean let go when Cas stopped twitching in his hand and flicked his fingers at the ground, spattering come on the dirt.

Cas rested his head against Dean’s shoulder, breathing hard. He smelled like clean laundry and white sheets. Dean laughed, a real laugh, warm and satisfied. He wanted to see Cas on white sheets. He slid his hand up over Castiel’s shoulder and rested the palm of his hand on the back of Cas’ neck. This was awesome. Dean’s dick was hard enough he could have hammered nails with it and Cas hadn’t even touched him once. He was having the best time he’d had in years.

Cas slipped his hands around Dean’s waist, hooking his fingers into Dean’s belt and gripping hard. Something about that was wrong. It poked a dark, unhappy memory in Dean without bringing it out where he could get a good look at it. Dean’s good mood stuttered. All of a sudden it felt weird that Cas still had his face tucked against his shoulder where Dean couldn’t see him.

“Cas?” Dean said, trying to push back at Castiel’s chest, push him away so Dean could get a look at him. Something was up.

Cas leaned back. At the sight of his expression Dean went ice cold. He didn’t smell like clean sheets any more. The wind shifted and blew a faint tinge of ozone into Dean’s face.

Cas looked at him, his face white. Then, slowly, deliberately, he moved his eyes left. A silent indication that Dean should look at something over his shoulder. He didn’t move his head, only his eyes. _Look there._ The gesture was like a shout. There was something behind Castiel.

Dean lifted his head, hiding the motion by pressing his lips against Castiel’s temple. Cas tightened his fingers around Dean’s belt, a silent signal of tension.

Discreetly, Dean looked over the area directly behind Cas. He found himself staring at the weeds surrounding the cabin. It was quiet and still, the flowers as innocuous and pretty as they had been ten minutes ago. The sun was still warm on his shoulders. Everything looked peaceful.

For no reason at all, Dean thought of the night before, of the exact moment when he’d lifted his head and looked up into the barrel of Gordon’s gun.

The crickets had stopped making their little insect noises. It was silent. It shouldn’t be silent.

Dean looked down at Cas meaningfully, nodded just a little. Castiel looked grim. Dean remembered how Cas had thrown that pincer at him the first moment Dean had come across him in the woods, and wondered if Cas could fight.

It might be monsters. It might be hunters. Whatever it was, it shouldn’t be there, which in Dean’s experience meant it was probably going to try and kill them. He couldn’t imagine why whatever was out there was waiting. Maybe they thought they needed to catch Dean and Castiel off guard. Even bound, angels weren’t easy.

“Hey,” Dean said casually. “Let’s take this inside, hmm?” He threw Cas a charming smile that Sam would have known in an instant meant they were in trouble.

Cas gave Dean a significant look, nodding in an almost comical imitation of ‘casual’. “Of course,” he said, too loud. Dean’s smile got tight. Just his luck Cas was a shitty liar.

“Ok!” Dean said with false cheer, pulling Cas off the car and pushing him toward the cabin.

About two steps from the door Dean heard a rustle in the grass behind them. He reacted explosively, shoving Cas towards the door and nearly trampling him trying to cram them both inside.

Something white-hot hit him in the shoulder and Dean fell like he’d been pickaxed. He heard Cas yelling, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t think past what his body was telling him. Dean felt like he was dying.

And then, just like that, the weight was off him and he could breathe again. Dean looked up. He was inside the cabin and Cas was leaning over him, looking frantic. In his hand was a pincer, glittering faintly.

“Are you all right? Dean?”

“Shit,” Dean said, grabbing his shoulder. It hurt like hell. Cas had pulled that pincer out of him. “Shit.”

If these guys had pincers, they were hunters.

Dean started to shove himself up, meaning to start tearing the cabin apart looking for more weapons. If they were being hunted by anyone with half a brain they would need more than what Dean had on him, and knowing how paranoid Rufus was, it would probably take three seconds of looking to find something. Dean was immediately interrupted when one of the windows shattered, spraying several little shining pieces of metal into the cabin.

Dean tackled Cas to the floor. His wings-

“Did they ding you?” Dean demanded, nose to nose with him.

“I’m fine,” Castiel’s eyes were huge. “We can’t hide here, they’ll-” he stopped, lifting his head. His face went grim. “They’re marking a circle. Around the cabin.”

If a hunter had the right ingredients, they could trap an angel in a circle of fire just as helpless as any demon caught in a demon trap.

Cas was still half-bound. Bobby and Sam had taken the truck. They could fight or they could run and neither option gave them good odds. If Cas was free of his sigils they had a shot-

Dean looked at the wall over the sink with a flash of hope, but Sam had taken his knife with him. They needed a hunter’s knife, and Dean had thrown his in the bushes like a dumbass.

Another window shattered and Dean pressed his face to the floor, flattening Castiel, who was starting to get pissed about it if the way he started shoving at Dean was any indicator.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine! I’ll be fine,” Cas said, blatantly lying. “Dean, you need to go, I’m the one they want.”

“Not a chance,” Dean said, his eyes fixed on the shitty couch Rufus had shoved against the wall, under the window. Bobby’s bag was sitting next to it. The sight of it felt like someone had just dropped a present into Dean’s lap. Dean pushed himself off Cas and crawled over to it, pulling his .45 as he got close to the window. Dean lifted his head just enough to get a look outside, making Cas hiss in a breath with something in between a warning and pure exasperation. Dean got a look at one of the douchebags lurking outside, ducked his head back down and fired two shots blind. He heard shouting, different voices. At least three guys out there, and they weren’t good enough at what they did to keep quiet so Dean wouldn’t know how many of them there were. The one Dean had seen was pretty short, Dean could definitely take him.

If Cas were free, Dean wouldn’t have to worry about who he could take, Cas would cut through them like butter. If he were free.

Dean zipped open Bobby’s bag and almost punched the air in triumph. Then he looked over at Cas, and held the bag shut.

“This is what we’re doing,” he started.

Cas was crawling over to him, looking quietly furious. “If you think I’m just going to let you sit here and end up at their mercy when you could-”

“I got a knife in this bag,” Dean said, raising his voice a little. Cas went silent. Dean leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Now, I’m gonna take this knife, and I’m gonna cut those seals off your neck.” Dean gave Cas a deadly serious look. “And no matter how tough it gets, or how much your head is messing with you, you are going to let me.” He gave Cas a fierce, bracing look, like they were already fighting side-by-side. “And then you and me are gonna bust down that door and kick the living shit out of those assholes outside.” Dean let out a breath and smiled. A ‘we-are-in-this-shit-together’ smile. “Now are you with me, or are we gonna go out ‘Bonnie and Clyde’?”

Cas squinted at him. That ‘what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at’ expression. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding frustrated, “What ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ is.”

Dean briefly wanted to strangle him. He thought he could smell something burning. “Seriously?” he hissed.

“Ge the knife,” Cas said, as if Dean was stupid for not figuring out that he was on board. He turned around and bowed his head a little, offering his neck. Dean pulled out Bobby’s knife, winced in anticipation, and sliced the shit out of his hand. With the slice he’d made on his arm last night, he was starting to look like he’d lost a fight with somebody’s cat. He smeared the blood on the blade and the runes carved into it started glowing. Dean narrowed his eyes and made two quick vertical slashes across the sigils at the back of Castiel’s neck. Cas flinched, and behind him, Dean forced himself not to react. Cas was flexing the fingers on his right hand as if he was stopping himself from making a fist.

Carefully, Dean turned the blade in the wound and started carving a symbol that had taken Bobby a year to figure out. Cas went still under Dean hands. Dean gritted his teeth as he made the final cut, bracing himself. Even if this next part went as smoothly as it could go, things were about to get wild.

Cas started breathing hard. He wings flickered in a nauseating way. It was like they just bent out of existence for a moment. Cas made a small sound, and started to get to his feet.

“No, Cas-” Dean tried to grab him, thinking of the douchebags outside. Cas threw a glance at him over one shoulder, almost snarling. Dean recoiled. Castiel’s eyes were points of blue light. The lightbulb overhead flickered, turning his wings into dark shadows at his back. Dean blinked hard, his eyes refusing to recognize if what he was looking at was two dimensional or not. Castiel’s wings were suddenly a painting of something he couldn’t understand.

The lightbulb above them destroyed itself in an explosion of sparks. Dean flinched, but Castiel didn’t. He stood up, something like dawning amazement on his face.

Another light gave up and blew itself to pieces, but the cabin didn’t get darker. It got brighter. Cas was glowing, and then he was glowing more. At the exact instant Dean realized he wasn’t going to stop, the window across from Cas shattered, and something shiny and silver scattered into the room.

“Shit-” Dean said, trying to slap his hands over his eyes and ears at the same time. “Cas!”

The world ignited in sound and light. Dean fell flat, the light burning his eyes even through his fingers and his eyelids. The noise was incomprehensible, screeching and terrifying. Not of this earth. It felt like a blast wave, the pressure behind the sound making the air feel thick. Every piece of glass in the cabin exploded.

The sound faded back as suddenly as it started. Dean thought for a second that he’d blown his other eardrum, the ringing in his ears was so complete. Then something shifted, and Dean realized the ringing was actually screaming. Someone was screaming.

He lifted his head, blinking his eyes hard. He was alone in the cabin. Every window was blown out. The door was off its hinges. Dean felt a spike of pure panic bury itself in his chest.

“Cas!” Dean scrambled to his feet, his legs sliding out from under him, the broken glass making the floor slick. He basically threw himself at the doorframe. “Cas!”

The grass outside looked scorched, everything blown outward and smoking. It looked like somebody had set off a bomb. One of the douchebag hunters was howling and writhing around on the ground. His eyes were burned right out of his head. Castiel was standing over him. He looked so calm and untouched by his surroundings, it was as if he’d just dropped out of the sky. His wings had vanished. He didn’t have a scratch on him.

Sometimes when angels were freed they fried everything in sight. It was almost the exact same thing that happened when they died.

Dean leaned over and braced himself on his knees. Then he forced himself to straighten up, as if he’d just bent over to get the kinks out of his back and not because he’d been about to fall over in relief. If Cas had enough juice to fold his wings away to wherever the hell angels kept their real forms, then he was perfectly fine. Better than fine.

“Don’t,” Dean said, and stopped because he sounded as freaked out as he was. He shook his head. “Don’t do that again.”

Cas walked over to him with a look of innocent concern. He had to step over the guy he’d smited to do it. Dean almost laughed out loud.

“Are you all right?” Cas asked earnestly.

Dean reached out and snatched Cas up, pulled him into a hug tight enough that Sam would have squirmed to get away. He felt different in Dean’s arms, without the wings. There was something more solid about him, somehow. He felt more like an angel now. Like there was something powerful under his skin.

Awkwardly, Cas brought his arms up around Dean’s back.

“I’m fine,” Dean said into his bare shoulder. Dean pulled back and wiped at his face. He wasn’t getting emotional. He wasn’t. He managed a smile, patted Castiel’s arm. “We gotta get you some real clothes, Cas.”

Cas looked faintly amused. He lifted his arms slightly, looked down at himself. His pajama bottoms were soaked and muddy. “I am less uncomfortable now than I was,” he said. “I feel…” he trailed off and looked away for a moment. When he continued he almost sounded surprised. “I don’t know how I feel. I don’t remember anything before they took me. This is-” he looked down at his own hand and rubbed his fingers together like they were brand new. “-Strange.”

That made sense.

“The uh,” Dean gestured at the douchebag on the ground, “the repo squad. Are they all…?”

“He’s alive,” Cas said, as if that had been in question. “The other three didn’t survive.”

Four. Dammit, Dean had been off by one. He was getting sloppy.

“You burned out their eyes?”

Cas tilted his head to one side in a kind of silent ‘what can you do’. It was kind of hilarious. “I let them see me.”

Dean made a mental note to add a blindfold to his angel pincer removal kit.

“Huh” he said, looking over at the douchebag who was still alive. The guy was sobbing pitifully into his hands, but both of those hands were slick with oil for the angel trap he hadn’t quite had time to finish. Dean wondered suddenly if they’d seen Cas and him together and kept quiet until they were done, if this guy had been in the brush snickering to his buddies and drawing things out on purpose.

“Well,” Dean said, something like anger making his voice hard and unforgiving, “if they want to be Peeping Toms, they have to be ready to deal with what they see,” Dean said. Cas frowned, just slightly. Dean ignored it. He walked over to the guy who was currently wailing in misery on the ground.

“Hey, chuckles,” Dean said. “How did you find us? Who sent you after us?” The dude actually snarled at him a little, swiped at the air blindly. Dean stepped out of the way, raised his voice. “Hey! You wanna die out here? Or do you wanna get to a hospital?”

The dude went still. He looked blindly in Dean’s direction. It was unsettling as shit. “You’ll take me to a hospital?” He wasn’t quite begging.

“Answer my questions and we’ll see.”


End file.
